Preamble

The House met at Half past Two o'Clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF FOOD

Fruit and Vegetables (Distribution)

Miss Burton: asked the Minister of Food what action he has decided to take following his consideration of the suggestions put forward by the Retail Fruit Trade Federation for the reorganisation and development of the distributive side of the fruit and vegetable trade.

The Minister of Food (Major Lloyd George): The proposal of the Retail Fruit Federation is still under examination.

Miss Burton: Does the Minister realise how weary the country is becoming of things being "under consideration"? The Government have had a further 10 weeks to look at this. Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that during the Recess bananas have been turned into pig food because the distributive system was so bad that they could not reach the shops or the hospitals in time and that growers could not collect their plums because it did not pay them? Is that the sort of distributive system that the Government intends to enforce?

Major Lloyd George: I think the House will agree that consideration is required before proceeding to action. This is by no means the only proposal which has been put forward. All the proposals which have been put forward—some were put forward in the time of the last Government and I do not see that any action was taken on them—are being examined. There is by no means unanimity on any of the proposals, and there is no great clarity as to what some of them are.

However, they are now being examined and the appropriate departments are considering them.

Miss Burton: Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that in politics one cannot please all the people all the time and that it is better to take a risk by doing something rather than nothing?

Fish (Union's Letter)

Miss Burton: asked the Minister of Food whether he is now in a position to make a statement on the suggestions put forward by the Transport and General Workers' Union in their letter dated 17th July last which was submitted by him to the White Fish Authority at the time.

Major Lloyd George: The White Fish Authority and representatives of the Transport and General Workers' Union have met and exchanged views on the suggestion contained in the union's letter of 17th July last.
The Authority will bear in mind the views of the union when preparing their plans for the industry.

Miss Burton: Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that fish is left on the dockside when housewives want it because the money which can be obtained locally is not sufficient to induce the wholesalers to take it? Will he please look into the matter a little more quickly?

Major Lloyd George: I am afraid that the hon. Lady has not really looked at the proposals of the Transport and General Workers' Union as carefully as I have. There are many things concerned with the quick freezing of the first catches at sea and other highly technical matters which the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research are considering, and when we have their report we will see what we can do.

Mrs. Braddock: Will the right hon. and gallant Gentleman make inquiries about five ships which were diverted from Grimsby to Hull last week? If all the fish had been landed at Grimsby the price would have dropped considerably, so they were deliberately diverted to Hull in order to keep up the price?

Major Lloyd George: I will look into that, but I have no information about it.

Egg Supplies

Miss Burton: asked the Minister of Food what action is intended by the Government concerning the black market in eggs; and if he will make a statement on the recent inquiry into this matter.

Sir I. Fraser: asked the Minister of Food whether he has now completed his investigation into the present method of egg control; and whether he will make a statement on changes in the system.

Mr. Dodds: asked the Minister of Food what action has been taken, at his instructions, by his Department to deal with the black market in eggs; and what success has attended these special efforts.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the Minister of Food whether he will now decontrol the sale of eggs.

Mr. Nabarro: asked the Minister of Food what changes he now proposes to make in the arrangements for distribution of shell eggs in the United Kingdom.

Major Lloyd George: I hope to be able to make a statement early in the next Session.

Sir I. Fraser: Will my right hon. and gallant Friend bear in mind that it is beyond human nature to suppose that men will not sell eggs which they do not themselves want to eat or buy eggs that they do want to eat at whatever is the appropriate price for the deal at the time?

Miss Burton: Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that from the grey or the black market some restaurants and hotels can get any number of eggs that they wish but the law-abiding housewife with her ration book gets one miserable egg a week? Will he do something about it?

Major Lloyd George: It is not one egg a week; the average is two eggs a week. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] It is no good hon. Gentlemen opposite saying "No" because the figures show that the allocations average two a week. These are figures which hon. Gentlemen opposite were very happy to accept when they were given by my predecessor in the last Parliament. All these points which are raised by hon. Gentlemen opposite and hon. Friends of mine show the tremendous difficulty of putting this straight. It is one of the most complicated schemes to put right

that there could possibly be. All the points which have been raised are very much in our minds.

Mr. Nabarro: Will my right hon. and gallant Friend bear in mind in the course of his further inquiries that in the last three years it has cost the nation £1,500,000 per annum in administration to cope with only 45 per cent. of all the eggs laid in and imported into the country?

Mr. Dodds: I object to my Question being grouped with the others, Sir. My Question asks what action has been taken by the Department to deal with the black market in eggs and what success has attended its special efforts. I am asking not what is to be done about the issue of eggs but what action has been taken.

Major Lloyd George: I have just outlined what action will be taken.

Mr. Dodds: I want to know what action has been taken, not what action will be taken.

Sir W. Smithers: Before my right hon. and gallant Friend makes his statement, will he remember three short points—that he might as well try to control the weather as control the distribution of eggs; that controls are the cause of shortages; and that if consumption is restricted production is restricted?

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Can the right hon. and gallant Gentleman adequately explain why it has taken so long to hatch out a policy on this subject? Is he aware that in many parts of the country it has been possible for a long time past quite legitimately to obtain eggs over the ration, whereas only a few miles away the people are limited to the ration?

Major Lloyd George: It is well known that people who have 25 hens or fewer are allowed to sell their eggs. That explains a good deal of it, but, as I said before, the scheme as such is not regarded by me as satisfactory and that is why I am looking into the whole thing to have it put right.

Mr. Dodds: As the Minister has not attempted to answer my Question, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Mr. Dodds: asked the Minister of Food the number of eggs issued per


ration book for the three months ended 27th September, 1952; and how this compares with a similar period in 1951.

Major Lloyd George: An average of 18½, which is the same as for the corresponding period of 1951.

Mr. Dodds: But did not the housewives expect a better performance from a business man's Government than this, and is not this a desolate and miserable story?

Brigadier Clarke: asked the Minister of Food if he will reconsider the classification of a second-grade egg, and pay more attention to size and less to spots of dirt.

Major Lloyd George: I have no reason to suppose that the present standard of classification for quality, which is the same as that used for the National Mark Scheme before the war, is causing any general dissatisfaction.

Brigadier Clarke: Does my right hon. and gallant Friend appreciate that by the regulations that now exist an egg the size of a marble will command top price, whereas the biggest egg the Minister can lay will be second-grade as long as there is a spot of dirt on it?

Major Lloyd George: Dirt is a most potent cause of deterioration in eggs, and the washing of eggs drives dirt into the egg and causes more rapid deterioration. All these standards have been accepted before the war and have been accepted also by the National Farmers' Union.

Brigadier Clarke: If we could do away with this rationing system we could sell eggs more quickly and it would not matter what dirt was on them.

Mr. Norman Smith: Can the Minister say why a very large, double-yolked egg should be classified as a second-class egg?

Major Lloyd George: It must have had one of the defects mentioned. It must be dirty or have a few blood spots or some of the other things I have written down here. That is what makes it second-class.

Mr. Osborne: asked the Minister of Food how many eggs passed through the packing stations for the first nine months of 1950, 1951 and 1952, respectively.

Major Lloyd George: The numbers of millions of eggs which passed through the United Kingdom packing stations in the first nine months of 1950, 1951 and 1952 were 4,295, 3,923 and 3,790 respectively.

Mr. Osborne: I did not get all the figures, but does the average fall over the three years indicate a smaller production of eggs or does it uphold the allegation made so widely that more eggs are going on to the black market?

Major Lloyd George: No, Sir. There were fewer hens laying.

Mr. Manuel: Is the Minister aware that most people in Scotland get only one egg per ration book per week, and would be try to discover what is happening to the rest of the eggs that are not going to the packing stations?

Major Lloyd George: As the average over the whole country is two per week, I find it extremely difficult to know how I. as a Welshman, could be persuaded to give Scotland more than one.

Mr. J. Henderson: In view of the fact that over 1,000 million fewer eggs passed through the packing stations in 1951 compared to the number which passed through in 1950, and that according to the figures given today there will be still fewer for the first nine months of 1952, will the Minister review the whole scheme and inquire what his 500 enforcement officers are doing that there should be such a substantial decrease in the number of eggs going to the packing stations?

Major Lloyd George: My hon. Friend has his figures a little mixed; he had better look at the figures I gave in the OFFICIAL REPORT. The actual drop in the number of eggs is the same as the fall in the hen population. As far as the enforcement officers are concerned, he referred to the total in the whole of the Ministry. As there are 350,000 egg producers in this country, he will appreciate the difficulty. That is why I have decided to go into the scheme to see if we can do anything to put it right.

Mr. Snow: Is there not a weak link in this chain of distribution through the packing stations in that farmers can give three months' notice of their decision not to send eggs to a certain packing station but are not under an obligation to say where they are going to send their eggs?

Major Lloyd George: All the points that have been raised are part of the general investigation into the scheme which I am now making.

Mr. Peyton: Would the Minister consult the Minister of Agriculture as to whether there is not far too great a difference between the spring price of eggs, which is the flush season, and the price in winter, which is the period of the year when only an artist can get his hens to lay?

Major Lloyd George: I am always in the closest consultation with my right hon. Friend in this matter.

Mr. Royle: Is it a fact that the hens have gone off laying owing to the shock of the return of a Tory Government?

Mrs. Mann: asked the Minister of Food the number of eggs supplied per ration book during 1950, 1951 and 1952, and the amount of feedingstuffs for poultry supplied during these years, including that supplied to poultry keepers with 25 hens or fewer.

Major Lloyd George: As the reply contains a table of figures I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mrs. Mann: In view of the former reply that many million fewer eggs are being sent to the packing stations, can the Minister say whether the amount of feedingstuffs has increased or decreased?

Major Lloyd George: Perhaps the hon. Lady would look at the reply. I have tried to save time by not having to quote the figures, but I would say that the amount of feedingstuffs supplied for poultry roughly corresponds to the number of eggs produced.

Mrs. Mann: As the Minister has indicated that this amount of feedingstuffs includes poultry keepers with 25 or fewer poultry per head, who are not required to send their eggs to the packing stations, is it possible that the only way a housewife can now get eggs for her family is to become a hen wife as well as a housewife? Is the Minister aware of the great dissatisfaction throughout the whole country regarding this question of eggs? Is it not possible in this jet-propelled age for the wit of the Minister to devise some means of getting eggs to the people?

Major Lloyd George: I do not know why the hon. Lady should get so worried about this now, because it is exactly the same situation as last year and the year before.

Mrs. Mann: Utter nonsense.

Major Lloyd George: The hon. Lady has more than once said that to me, and on both occasions she has been wrong. I am making a statement, which can be proved, that the figures are based on exactly the same basis as last year, and that is the basis taken by the then Government, which the hon. Lady supported and never criticised.

Mrs. Mann: On a point of order. Is it in order, Sir, for a Minister to give a confusing reply relative to the general distribution of eggs, which may find themselves in the black market, and particularising them as having been distributed to housewives?

Mr. Speaker: There is nothing out of order in what has occurred. I think we are referred to a table of figures later on.

Following is the information:



Average number of eggs supplied per ration book
Amount of feedingstuffs supplied for poultry Tons


1950
120
1,400,000


1951
102
1,455,000


First nine months of 1952
78
1,000,000




(estimate)

Meat Ration

Sir I. Fraser: asked the Minister of Food whether he will now indicate the proposed level of the meat ration for the remainder of the year.

Major Lloyd George: I hope to maintain the present meat ration of 2s. a week for some time, but I cannot yet make a forecast for the remainder of the year.

Sir I. Fraser: Are supplies coming forward from the Argentine and can the Minister consider allowing the price of meat, or at any rate some cuts of meat, to rise so that the law of supply and demand may operate and produce more meat for the benefit of all?

Queensland Food Corporation

Mr. Hurd: asked the Minister of Food if he has considered the report of the committee which investigated the


operations of the Queensland British Food Corporation; and if he will now state the decisions reached by the Government.

Major Lloyd George: The Advisory Body submitted their report to the Queensland British Food Corporation who appointed them. I am at present consulting the Queensland Government about the recommendations which the Corporation subsequently made to both Governments and our joint decisions will be announced as soon as possible.

Mr. Hard: May we take it that this investigating committee have made a most thorough probe into the affairs of this Corporation, and that Her Majesty's Government here and in Queensland will reach firm decisions about future policy?

Major Lloyd George: I certainly hope so. I am waiting to hear from the Queensland Government, and I can assure my hon. Friend that the committee did very good work indeed.

Captain Duncan: asked the Minister of Food when he proposes to publish the report of the Primrose Committee on the activities of the Queensland British Overseas Food Corporation.

Major Lloyd George: This is one of the questions I am discussing with the Queensland Government and I will make known our joint decision as soon as possible.

Captain Duncan: It is the intention of my right hon. and gallant Friend, is it not, to publish the report at some time, because there is a great deal of public interest in this matter?

Major Lloyd George: Yes, Sir, certainly. But my hon. and gallant Friend will realise that this is a joint decision and we shall have to await their observations.

Milk

Mr. Dodds: asked the Minister of Food if, in view of the concern about the deterioration in the quality of milk, he will take steps to ensure an absolute minimum for the compositional quality of milk, below which it would be an offence to sell milk, instead of the presumed standard in operation at present.

Major Lloyd George: I must ask the hon. Member to await the report of the Working Party on Quality Milk Production who are studying this matter.

Mr. Dodds: Will the Minister bear in mind that the overwhelming evidence from the National Dairymen's Association and the spokesmen of the county councils is that the standard of milk is seriously deteriorating?

Major Lloyd George: It is the purpose of this committee to investigate that and on their report will be determined what further action will be taken.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the Minister of Food to what extent adequate supplies of fresh milk will be available for liquid consumption during the winter months.

Major Lloyd George: Provided there are no abnormal weather conditions, supplies of fresh milk should be sufficient to meet the normal demand for liquid consumption.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: How does the Minister explain the fact that pasteurised and non-pasteurised milk have been mixed together before sale to the public, and that milk 49 or more hours old has been distributed?

Major Lloyd George: That is not the question which the hon. and gallant Gentleman asked me. It was whether there would be enough milk available during the winter months, and I said that there was no reason to suppose there would not be.

Mr. Dodds: Does not the Minister agree that putting up the price of milk recently has saved there being a scarcity of milk, because many people cannot afford the milk?

Major Lloyd George: I am very glad to have an opportunity of refuting that statement completely. The actual short-take of milk from 19th September to about 7th October was purely seasonal. It happens every year. Consumption this year is practically the same as it was last year.

Mr. Willey: Would the Minister agree that every month since the price increase has shown a fall, and that it has averaged between 3 million and 5 million gallons of milk per month?

Major Lloyd George: No, Sir. The seasonal shortage this year, which is the ordinary seasonal shortage shows a loss of about 5 per cent. The estimated consumption this year compared with last year is practically the same.

Lieut.-Commander Maydon: asked the Minister of Food what percentages of our annual milk production in the United Kingdom are used in cheese-making, dried milk products and tinned liquid milk products, respectively; and what proportion of the United Kingdom requirements in these three products is met from home-produced milk.

Major Lloyd George: As the reply contains a number of figures I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the information:


The figures are estimates for the year 1952.



Percentage of milk production in the United Kingdom used for manufacture
Percentage of milk products manufactured from home-produced milk for consumption in the United Kingdom


Rationed cheese
6·9
35·0


Dried milk products
2·8
42·0


Tinned liquid milk products
3·7
74·0

Mr. Willey: asked the Minister of Food the amount of full price fresh milk consumed in September, 1952.

Major Lloyd George: Approximately 107 million gallons in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Willey: Does the right hon. and gallant Gentleman now agree that, disregarding seasonal variations and taking every month with the corresponding month of last year, since the increase in the price of milk this summer the consumption of fresh milk has dropped by between 3 million and 5 million gallons per month prior to this September, when it dropped by several hundred thousand gallons?

Major Lloyd George: My estimate, as I told the hon. Member, is made by taking the year as a whole and September was practically the same in 1952 as in 1951.

Mr. Willey: Does the right hon. and gallant Gentleman realise that I am not asking him to take each year with the other year as a whole, but I am suggesting that, subsequent to the price increases, there has been a very serious and drastic fall in the consumption of milk?

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: As fresh milk includes milk which is at least 48 hours old, can the right hon. and gallant Gentleman say how long fresh milk remains fresh and how old is some of the fresh milk for the distribution of which he is responsible?

Food Poisoning

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: asked the Minister of Food what steps he is taking in conjunction with the Minister of Health to improve the standards of food preparation which have caused a continued increase in food poisoning.

Major Lloyd George: My right hon. Friend the Minister of Health gave information on 16th October about the action we are taking jointly. In addition, my medical and technical officers pay periodic visits to local authorities to assist them in improving the conditions of food handling. Special attention is being paid to the inspection of meat and of meat products manufacture. A manual of guidance on hygiene in the catering industries is shortly to be published.

Home-Killed Meat (Cold Storage)

Mr. Hurd: asked the Minister of Food if he will make a progress report on the experiments in cold storing home-killed beef, lamb and pork this autumn.

Major Lloyd George: Small amounts of pork were cold stored during the summer and kept for short periods to even out distribution. A small quantity of home-killed beef was hard frozen and placed in cold store. Some of it has now been issued. Its condition was satisfactory. The experiments are continuing.

Mr. Royle: Is it the Minister's intention to extend this experiment in the future so that the autumn flow might be preserved?

Major Lloyd George: That was one of the reasons for the experiment, to get the peak lower than it has been. I said at the time that it was experimental, but I think it will be continued because so far it has been satisfactory.

Slaughtering Delays

Mr. Hurd: asked the Minister of Food what loss of meat occurred through delays in slaughtering fat cattle and lambs during August, September and October; and in which parts of the country the most serious loss occurred.

Major Lloyd George: It is not possible to make an estimate. But this autumn fatstock marketing has been more evenly spread than in recent years. This has reduced the interval between purchase and slaughter to what is in general no more than reasonable and necessary.

Mr. Hurd: Will my right hon. and gallant Friend keep a close watch on those areas where there have been the longest delays so that as his experiments in cold storage are developed these areas will be looked after particularly?

Major Lloyd George: Certainly, but my hon. Friend will be glad to know that last year that interval between the time of arrival of the cattle for slaughter and the slaughtering was between five to seven days and that for this year it has been reduced to three to four days.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Is my right hon. and gallant Friend aware of the report made to the National Farmers' Union in Scotland this week where it is reported that certain sheep in the Glasgow area have been kept seven or eight days without food between the time of sale and the time of slaughter? Would he keep an eye on that sort of thing and look into it, for apart from the cruelty issue the loss of condition must be very great?

Major Lloyd George: I have no information about that, but I will look into it.

Retail Butchers (Licensing)

Mr. Morley: asked the Minister of Food if he will make a statement in regard to the request sent to him by the National Federation of Meat Traders to suspend the abolition of the licensing system for retail butchers.

Major Lloyd George: I carefully considered the Federation's views, but came to the conclusion that restricted entry into the retail meat trade is no longer justified.

Mr. Morley: Does the Minister think there is no substance in the contentions

by the Meat Traders' Association, that de-licensing while meat is in short supply will increase distribution costs, increase black marketing and bring more competition from the multiple firms against small traders?

Major Lloyd George: I went into all this very carefully and I listened to the Federation's views, but after giving the question very careful thought I found no need why we should still have licensing in this trade more than any other, and as it is the policy of Her Majesty's Government to get rid of licences as soon as possible I took advantage of the opportunity.

Flour Improvers

Dr. Stross: asked the Minister of Food which flour improvers other than chlorine dioxide he has considered as possible substitutes for nitrogen trichloride; and which, he has been advised, is the most desirable.

Major Lloyd George: The examination of possible alternatives to the agene process has not yet been completed. Until I have the report of this examination I cannot add to what I said to the hon. Member on the subject on 31st March.

Dr. Stross: Will the Minister not accept, however, that it has been a very long time since this investigation began, and would be in any event accept this guiding principle, that there should be no introduction into the bodies of human beings of any chemicals which are foreign to, and not normally found in, human beings?

Major Lloyd George: I should hate to accept that principle, because I do not know whether it could be worked. The hon. Gentleman asked me to agree that there should not be introduced into the bodies of human beings any chemicals not normally found in human beings, but I am not sufficiently a technician to accept that. I must point out to the hon. Gentleman, however, that the last time he asked me this question I told him that my information was that the investigation would take a considerable time and that I did not expect to get the report before the end of the year. I still hope that that is the date by which I shall get it.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Would my right hon. and gallant Friend go into this again, because this interference by chemists and the so-called improvement of flour is becoming a very great danger? How can pure flour be improved?

Major Lloyd George: I would not know about that, but that is what this inquiry is supposed to tell me. I understand that this process has been used in flour making for over 50 years, but to make quite certain that there is no risk attached to it this committee is making a most careful investigation not only into agene but into possible alternatives.

Dr. Stross: Would the Minister at least answer me on this point, has his Department considered the use of ascorbic acid?

Major Lloyd George: I do not know about that particular one, but there are all sorts of alternatives before these gentlemen, and that is why it takes such a long time. Tests over a long period of time have to be taken before we dare take any risk in the matter.

Dr. Stross: asked the Minister of Food to what extent there has been a change over from the use of nitrogen trichloride as a flour improver; and whether he can now say when nitrogen trichloride will no longer be in use.

Major Lloyd George: I have no precise information of the extent to which particular flour improvers are used and until I have the results of the investigations now in progress I cannot make any statement about the future.

Dr. Stross: Can the Minister tell us whether it is roughly 5 per cent., about 1 per cent., per year, since the Government originally stated that this change would take place? If so, does he not think that that is rather slow in connection with the use of a substance which is admittedly dangerous to some animals and possibly dangerous to human beings?

Major Lloyd George: The hon. Gentleman is probably in a far better position than I am to judge about the length of time, but I was advised by the technicians over a year ago that it would take a year to test it, and, therefore, I cannot anticipate their decision. It is getting on towards the end of the year and I hope at that time to be in possession of the necessary information.

Argentine Meat

Mr. G. Jeger: asked the Minister of Food whether he will make a statement on the progress of the negotiations with the Argentine Government on meat.

Major Lloyd George: I cannot add to the reply given to the hon. Members for Dartford (Mr. Dodds) and Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) on 15th October.

Mr. Jeger: Can the Minister say whether negotiations are still proceeding through the medium of our ambassador or whether any of the retail or wholesale meat traders in this country have a voice in these negotiations?

Major Lloyd George: The negotiations are proceeding in the normal way.

Mr. Woodburn: Is not the time coming when the Minister should tell the general public the world position in regard to the consumption of meat? Is he not aware that the continual hopes which are held out of more red meat are very disturbing and keep people in a state of great suspense?

Major Lloyd George: I have not noticed that people are in a state of great suspense, but I have noticed that they are a little more satisfied this year with the position than they were last year.

Mr. Willey: asked the Minister of Food what quantity of meat was imported from the Argentine for the last month for which figures are available; and what quantity of meat was imported from the Argentine for the corresponding period last year.

Major Lloyd George: According to the records of my Department 688 tons of meat and offal were imported from Argentina during September this year as compared with 4,598 tons imported during the same month in 1951.

Mr. Willey: Will the right hon. and gallant Gentleman agree that this is a serious shortfall and emphasises the need to speed up these negotiations? Is he never tempted to send out a business man to the Argentine?

Major Lloyd George: The hon. Member must not compare strictly this September with last September, because he will appreciate much more readily than


I that last September came at the end of a period when there was practically no meat available at all.

Mr. Dodds: Will the Minister state the price we are paying for the meat which has been coming in from the end of September? Might it be £200 a ton?

Major Lloyd George: The hon. Member will know in good time.

Mr. Willey: Does the Minister agree that the meat ration in September last was more than it is now?

Major Lloyd George: No, there is a larger meat ration now than in September last year, soon after which the present Government came in.

Backyard Pigs

Mr. Nabarro: asked the Minister of Food what obstacles now remain to abandoning the restrictions upon rearing and slaughter of backyard pigs.

Major Lloyd George: The present rules are needed to ensure that pigs raised by self-suppliers are additional to normal production and that they yield the maximum amount of extra food with a minimum use of scarce feedingstuffs. They must, I am afraid, continue so long as the supply position makes it necessary for producers generally to sell for the ration.

Mr. Nabarro: In view of the steadily improving feedingstuffs position and increased home production would my right hon. and gallant Friend give an assurance that the first additional supplies of feedingstuffs will be used to abolish the very restrictive clauses in the regulations relating to the raising of backyard pigs?

Major Lloyd George: I think it follows that as long as the restricted position of supply remains as it is today, and as long as it remains necessary for most of the bacon produced to go into the ration, restrictions must, of course, remain.

Dr. Stross: Would not the Minister agree that the raising of backyard pigs, while good in itself, offers no safeguard to the public who use the meat, unless the meat is inspected after slaughter? Will he bear in mind any necessary alteration in the rules, so that local authorities can see that the meat is inspected?

Sugar Beet (Southern Counties)

Mr. Gough: asked the Minister of Food whether he is satisfied with the home production of sugar; and if he will encourage and expand the sugar beet industry by the immediate erection of a sugar beet factory in Sussex.

Major Lloyd George: It is very gratifying that record outputs of home-produced sugar have been achieved during the past two seasons. The reconstruction of the sugar beet factories which is at present going on will be a help and encouragement to the industry, but the building of another factory is ruled out at present because of the limitations on capital investment.

Mr. Gough: Would my right hon. and gallant Friend agree that plans were well advanced three or four years ago for the building of a sugar beet factory in the neighbourhood of Chichester, but were then delayed owing to a financial crisis of the kind which used to occur year by year in those days? Would he give us his assurance that at the first possible moment this extremely essential factory will be built?

Major Lloyd George: I could not give an assurance, because we have to remember that we have commitments with Commonwealth countries with regard to taking sugar produced there. The extension and improvement of factories here, when completed, will make the factories quite capable of dealing with the home crop, and as it would take at least three years to build one of these factories it could not make an immediate contribution to the current difficulty.

Dr. King: Would the Minister bear in mind the claims which Hampshire farmers have been making for a long time for such a factory?

Major Legge-Bourke: Would my right hon. and gallant Friend bear in mind that sugar beet growers, in East Anglia in particular, are very anxious for him to do what my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Gough) has asked him to do, to build a factory in the south? At present, the southern crop holds up the taking of the East Anglian crop by East Anglian factories.

Mr. Hayman: Will the Minister also bear in mind the south-west of England, when a new factory is to be provided, because at present our sugar beet crop has to travel a very long distance?

Major Lloyd George: I was going to suggest to my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Gough) that Chichester was not the only part of Britain that wanted a sugar beet factory and that there are claims from many parts of the country. At the moment I can give no undertaking that a factory will be provided, because we are determined to go on with the modernisation of existing factories, which are sufficient to deal with our present crop.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: Is my right hon. and gallant Friend aware that sugar beet in the south of England has very of ten to go via Bristol in order to get to the north of England with consequent risk of frost to the crop, and that the expense is so great to the farmers that in a very short time the sugar beet crop in the south of England will become less and less? It is a valuable cleaning crop, but it will also have an effect on other cereal crops as well.

Major Lloyd George: On the question of transport costs, special arrangements have been made to help to meet them, and in the latest price adjustment made they have been taken into account.

Captain Soames: Will my right hon. and gallant Friend remember that there is a widespread demand not only from Sussex but from all the Southern counties for a sugar beet factory? Could not the difficulties be overcome?

Major Lloyd George: That is the original point, and the answer is that in existing circumstances it is not possible.

Mr. P. Wells: Would the Minister discuss the matter with his colleague the Minister of Agriculture?

Sweets Ration

Brigadier Medlicott: asked the Minister of Food if he can now give a forecast of the date when sweets will be de-rationed.

Major Lloyd George: No, Sir, but I shall de-ration as soon as circumstances permit.

Brigadier Medlicott: Is not the consumption of sweets artificially inflated to some extent by the fact that many people, of whom I confess I am one, purchase the maximum that is available so as not to lose part of the ration? Without the ration, might it not be that the normal demand could be met from the normal sources of supply?

Major Lloyd George: That may well be, but when the amount going into the shops is not quite the amount of the ration that is a risk one cannot take. The fact is that the cuts on imported materials brought into effect last year are only now beginning to have their full effect.

Barley Exports

Mr. Bullard: asked the Minister of Food whether, as a consequence of exporting malting barley, he will take steps to see that the currency earned in the transaction is used to purchase additional quantities of feeding grain from abroad.

Major Lloyd George: Any shortfall in the anticipated receipts of home-grown grain into the ration pool as a result of these small exports will be made good by increased imports.

Mr. Bullard: Cannot the Minister augment the existing supply of homegrown feedingstuffs, at all events later in the year, by using any profit he may make on selling this malting barley abroad in buying feeding grain?

Major Lloyd George: I am sure my hon. Friend will realise that the amount involved, which is about 120,000 tons, would not make a very great impression upon the feedingstuffs pool, which he knows is much bigger.

Captain Duncan: asked the Minister of Food why he has allowed the export of 120,000 tons of barley from this country; and what effect this will have on the proposal to deration animal feedingstuffs.

Major Lloyd George: To earn a trading profit in European Payments Union currencies.
The answer to the second part of the Question is, "None." The amount exported is small and any shortfall in deliveries to the ration pool will be made good by imports.

Captain Soames: asked the Minister of Food how many tons of barley were exported from the United Kingdom between 1st August and 1st October, 1952; and to what extent it is proposed to export any further quantities.

Major Lloyd George: According to the records of my Department, approximately 71,000 tons. A further quantity, not exceeding 50,000 tons, may be shipped between 1st October and 30th November.

Captain Soames: Presumably this barley was sold at malting prices. Can the Minister give an assurance that the amount of foreign currency gained through this deal will be spent on purchasing cheaper feeding barley abroad, so that there may be more feedingstuffs in this country this year than there would have been had this deal not taken place?

Major Lloyd George: I could not say that, but any short-fall there may be in the agreed level will be made up out of this. The question of what use will be made of it as a whole will depend on circumstances.

Mr. P. Roberts: Is the Minister aware that this malting barley was sold at the good price of 130s. a quarter and that since the Minister prevented any further export the price of malting barley has slumped to 100s. or less. Is he further aware we are losing a valuable export possibility by not exporting this malting barley at a good price, when there is no demand for it at home?

Major Lloyd George: The fact is that, owing to the very heavy harvest it came at a time when there was a great deal in store and the fact that there was a glut might have affected the price even more. We took advantage of the opportunity which was offered.

Mr. Roberts: Will the Minister consider doing it again at a later date?

Horse Slaughter (Appointment of Committee)

Sir John Crowder: asked the Minister of Food if he will state the names of the members and the terms of reference of the committee which is to inquire into the question of the slaughter of horses.

Mr. E. Johnson: asked the Minister of Food when he will be able to make a

statement about the findings of the committee set up by himself and the Secretary of State for Scotland to consider the law relating to the slaughter of horses in slaughterhouses and knackers' yards.

Major Lloyd George: I am pleased to say that the Duke of Northumberland has accepted the Chairmanship of the Committee.
I will arrange for details of the membership and terms of reference to be circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
I hope that the Committee will hold its first meeting within the next few days but I cannot, of course, forecast when their report will be completed.

Sir J. Crowder: Could the Minister, in the meanwhile, while awaiting the report, give special instructions to his officers to do all that can be done to see that cruelty in the slaughtering of the horses is minimised as far as possible?

Major Lloyd George: As my hon. Friend probably knows, I have now been instructed as Minister to take charge of that side of slaughtering. An order was made some time ago making it incumbent on slaughterers to give notice of intention to slaughter. It is, of course, the local authority who is responsible, but I am in touch with the local authorities in this matter.

Mr. Beswick: Can the Minister say whether the terms of reference will permit the committee to inquire into the allegations that New Forest ponies are rounded up and slaughtered for human consumption?

Major Lloyd George: I should think so, because the terms of reference refer to horses generally, but I will bring that point to the notice of the committee.

Mr. Hastings: Do the terms of reference include the slaughtering of horses imported from abroad?

Major Lloyd George: I should have thought so because the terms of reference begin with the words:
To consider the law and the practice thereunder relating to the slaughter of horses in slaughterhouses.…
It does not say where they come from.

Mr. Woodburn: Will this committee look into the cruelty that takes place in the transit of horses for slaughter?

Major Lloyd George: That is not in the terms of reference.

Mr. Rankin: Could the Minister say if the terms of reference will cover those horses which are exported to other countries and then slaughtered there?

Major Lloyd George: That would not come within the terms of reference, because it might be outside our authority altogether. If horses are exported to other countries that can only be stopped by the ordinary approach through the usual channels.

Mr. Rankin: But is it not the case that if the terms of reference do not include horses exported from this country to other countries the whole purpose of the inquiry will be rendered null and void?

Major Lloyd George: I am sorry; I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman. I will look specifically into the terms of reference with regard to his point about trade with other countries.

Following is the information:
The membership of the Committee is:

The Duke of Northumberland—Chairman.
Alderman L. G. H. Alldridge.
The Lord Digby.
Professor F. Grundy.
R. Jarvis, Esq.
W. M. Mitchell, Esq., M.R.C.V.S.
Colonel Thompson.

The terms of reference are:
To consider the law and the practice thereunder relating to the slaughter of horses in slaughterhouses and knackers' yards and to recommend whether any further safeguards should be introduced to ensure the humane slaughtering of horses in this country.

English Prunes (Price)

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the Minister of Food if he will control the present selling price of English prunes.

Major Lloyd George: No, Sir.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Is the Minister aware that at the present price of 3s. a 1b. English prunes cost three times as much as the imported foreign ones? Will he do something to prevent the English consumer from being frightened off the consumption of English prunes?

Major Lloyd George: I thought the hon. and gallant Gentleman would be rather pleased that we made an experiment at all. There are no imported prunes here now, and if it had not been

that we took the control off it would not have been possible to make this experiment which, in the initial stages, is fairly expensive.

Mr. Nabarro: Would the Minister bear in mind that in experiments conducted in Worcestershire and Warwickshire only 30,000 lbs. of prunes were produced this year, that it is the beginning of a new industry, and that at the rate of 120 fruits per lb. and 12 fruits per breakfast dish that dish costs only 4d., which is very reasonable?

Sprats

Mr. Driberg: asked the Minister of Food what steps he is taking to assist the fishermen of Tollesbury and the other smaller fishing villages on the East Coast to find markets for their catches of sprats during the coming spratting season.

Major Lloyd George: I understand that the White Fish Authority are giving special attention to the improved marketing of sprats. I have just received a letter from the hon. Member on a special aspect of the matter and will let him have a reply as soon as possible.

Mr. Driberg: Will the Minister bear in mind the importance of not allowing these small fishing communities and fishing fleets to die out altogether and that there is a very serious threat to their existence owing partly to the activities of his own Department, as outlined in that letter?

Major Lloyd George: Without going into details of that matter now, which the hon. Member knows about, I shall certainly do everything I can to maintain these small communities; but with regard to the question of sales, they are purely temporary and in no way my responsibility.

Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: Does my right hon. and gallant Friend regard the recent unanimous decision of the Maldon division of the Labour Party, in support of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Attlee), as a sprat to catch a Maldon mackerel?

Icelandic Fish (Landing Restrictions)

Mrs. Braddock: asked the Minister of Food if he is aware that the trawler owners of Grimsby and Hull have decided to refuse the use of boxes and winches to


the Icelandic fishing vessels landing fish; and in view of the fact that this action will deprive this country of large supplies of fish and so cause the price of fish to rise, what action he proposes to take.

Major Lloyd George: Her Majesty's Government are watching the position closely, but it would not be in the general interest to make any statement on the matter at present.

Mrs. Braddock: Is the Minister aware that housewives consider that any action taken by private enterprise which deprives them of food should be considered to be a criminal offence? Is he aware also that the action that has been taken by the Grimsby and Hull Trawlers' Association has deprived this country of approximately £250,000 worth of fish, and will he obtain a copy of the speech made on behalf of the Icelandic Trawler Owners' Association as late as 2nd October, in which they say that they consider this to be a matter for Government action and that it should not be left to private enterprise to deal with it?

Major Lloyd George: I do not want to go into this rather delicate matter in very great detail now. It is being dealt with by the Government, and I have no more to say at the moment. As far as the trawler owners are concerned, as long as they keep within what they are legally entitled to do, the Government cannot interfere; they have not done anything to date, as far as I know, which is illegal.

Mr. Law: May I ask my right hon. and gallant Friend two questions? First, is he aware that the action taken in Grimsby and Hull has the overwhelming support of the fishermen of those ports, whose livelihood has been threatened by the action of the Icelandic Government? Further, is he aware that the action of the Icelandic Government in closing their waters to British and other trawlers has no foundation whatever in international law?

Major Lloyd George: If my right hon. Friend does not mind, I should prefer not to add anything at the moment.

Mr. Younger: While it certainly is true that the fishermen in, I think, all the ports—not only in Hull, but certainly in Grimsby—feel very strongly about this Iceland question, is the Minister nevertheless aware that it is most desirable

that this should be settled by diplomatic means and not by a trade war between the private industries of the two countries, which can do no good to either side?

Major Lloyd George: I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman.

Mrs. Braddock: Will the Minister obtain a copy of the speech to which I have referred and place it in the Library, so that Members of the House can see the suggestion made by the Icelandic Trawler Owners' Association?

Major Lloyd George: I assume that the speech was published in a periodical, and I should have thought that it might have got into the Library without my putting a copy there.

Mr. Noel-Baker: Can the Minister tell whether the action taken by the trawler owners is in accordance with their existing international obligations?

Major Lloyd George: What I said was that as long as the trawler owners did nothing illegal—to date, they have done nothing illegal; to withhold facilities is not illegal—and as long as they remain within the law, the Government cannot interfere.

Mrs. Braddock: It is criminal.

Lady Tweedsmuir: What is the latest progress in the negotiations with the Icelandic Government?

Major Lloyd George: Perhaps my hon. Friend will put down a Question to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary.

Rationed Foods (Distribution)

Mr. Bence: asked the Minister of Food what steps he is taking to ensure that food allocated to retailers on the basis of registered customers, goes to those customers.

Major Lloyd George: Fair distribution of allocated foods among the retailer's customers is left to his good sense, which is usually reliable.

Mr. Bence: Is the Minister aware that there is a growing conviction among housewives of all sections of the community that with certain perishable foods like butter, bacon and meat, the amount of these commodities that the housewife can get is based rather upon the amount


of money in her purse rather than on the number of ration books in her bag? Is he further aware that the satisfaction which he expressed a little while ago, which came to him from housewives of a certain section of the community, is at the expense of the lower income group?

Major Lloyd George: That is an extremely unfortunate statement. (HON. MEMBERS: "It is true.") In answer to a Question last July I issued a detailed table of the take-up of the rations, which is the only method by which the figures can be ascertained. If the hon. Member would do me the favour of going to the Library to look at a copy he would find that the take-up this year is in some cases greater than last year.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Can the Minister explain how it is that some retailers in certain parts of the country are quite legitimately, apparently, able to sell to their registered customers four, six or a dozen eggs per week over and above the normal ration?

Major Lloyd George: If the hon. and gallant Member knows about that, it is his duty to report it. On the other hand, the allocation, which is an average of two for the year, may in one period be only one or, in some areas, none at all, but in other periods it may be three. It is not two every week, two is the average over the whole year.

Mr. Baldwin: Is my right hon. and gallant Friend aware that some of the eggs which are being sold freely are ducks eggs, which are not under control?

Mr. Bence: Is the Minister aware that many retailers—meat retailers in particullar—are compelled at the end of the week either to hold the meat without storage capacity, to let it rot, or to sell it to people who can afford to buy it?

Meat Prices (Display)

Mr. Bence: asked the Minister of Food what steps he has taken, or contemplates, to enforce the regulation to display price lists of meat.

Major Lloyd George: In the normal course of their duties enforcement inspectors visit butchers' shops to see that, among other things, the provision in the Meat (Prices) Order, that the maximum retail prices of meat must be displayed in a conspicuous position, is being observed.

Mr. Bence: Is the Minister aware of the practice which has grown up during and since the war of rolling meat up and boning it? Is he aware that housewives are buying joints of meat not knowing what cuts they are? They are not off the horns, off the hooves, or the head, but from some other part of the carcase and many pay a price in excess of the fixed prices. Will the right hon. and gallant Gentleman enforce the regulations to see that the price ticket is put on the cut of meat?

Major Lloyd George: That is not the Question the hon. Member asked. He asked me to enforce the regulation to display price lists of meat. The question he now raises is that of putting prices on each piece of meat and that is what I am considering at the moment.

Turkeys

Captain Soames: asked the Minister of Food how far he proposes to impose any restrictions this year on the serving of turkey by catering establishments during Christmas week.

Major Lloyd George: This year turkeys are expected to be more plentiful than during the Christmas period, 1951. There are no grounds, therefore, for re-imposing a control which was safely abandoned last year.

Dried Fruit

Mr. Janner: asked the Minister of Food how much dried fruit will be available to housewives during the coming Christmas season; and to what extent more eggs will be available to facilitate Christmas cooking.

Major Lloyd George: There will be more dried fruit than for several years past. Supplies should reach the shops in about a fortnight. Egg supplies should be at least as good as last year.

U.S.S.R. Grain

Mr. Willey: asked the Minister of Food why the new contract with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics provides only for the delivery of 200,000 tons of grain, whereas the previous trade agreement provided for 1,000,000 tons of grain; and what steps he has taken to secure additional grain from other sources.

Major Lloyd George: We bought all that the Russians were prepared to offer at this stage. The imports required to maintain the feedingstuffs ration pool are drawn from many sources and I have no reason to believe that we shall not be able to procure them.

Mr. Willey: Does the right hon. and gallant Gentleman agree that official publications of his Ministry indicated in the summer that it was anticipated that we should get additional supplies of grain from Russia in the forthcoming few weeks, but that this has not materialised? Can he assure the House that additional supplies will not involve dollars?

Major Lloyd George: There are many sources, as the hon. Gentleman knows, from which we can get supplies of coarse grains and feedingstuffs and, naturally, we would go to those where the currency is easier.

Mr. Bottomley: Will the Minister tell us when these trade negotiations commenced?

Major Lloyd George: I am not quite sure of the date, but I think they were from the beginning of July, or something like that.

Food Price Increases

Mrs. Mann: asked the Minister of Food how many food items have been increased in price since 31st October, 1951, and the total increase of all items, and the particular increase in each.

Major Lloyd George: There are several thousand food items and the work required to provide details of any price increases for every item would not help to form a reliable judgment on the present trend.
The food section of the Interim Index of Retail Prices is the only proper measure of the general increase in food prices. From October, 1951 to August, 1952—the latest month for which figures are available—the index shows a total rise of about 12 per cent.

Mr. Beswick: If it requires too much work to list those prices which have increased, would it be less trouble to give a list of those which have not increased?

Major Lloyd George: The only method we have, as the hon. Member knows full

well, is to do it in the way in which it has always been done.

Mr. Lewis: Are we to take it that this is the means by which the Government are implementing their Election promise to bring down the price of food?

Major Lloyd George: The cost of living came down last month, for the first time in two years. I have one other piece of good news for hon. Members, that the rise in the food index this year was 12 per cent., but in the year before it was 13 per cent.

Mrs. Mann: Although the reply shows an astonishing increase in prices, would the Minister agree that that is not the whole story and that he takes no note whatever of the increases which are being imposed because of de-control? May I have an answer?

Chocolate Bars (Weight)

Mrs. Mann: asked the Minister of Food how far regulations are now in force compelling chocolate manufacturers to sell chocolate bars by weight.

Major Lloyd George: There are no regulations which require manufacturers to sell chocolate bars by weight, but controlled retail prices for each product are based on average net weight.

Mrs. Mann: Is the Minister aware that this is a perfect example of what happens when de-control takes place? Children are being robbed as the 2 oz. bar does not now weigh 2 oz. Is the Minister aware that eight 2 oz. bars of chocolate with tinfoil and wrapping now weigh only 13 oz.? Is he further aware that coupons for 16 oz. have to be given up for 13 oz. of chocolate? Will he do something about it?

Mr. Shinwell: Now that we are reaching the end of Questions and the right hon. and gallant Gentleman has been answering Questions on the subject of food, food prices, food supply and the rest, can he say whether there is anything in the rumour which is current in the Press and elsewhere that the Ministry of Food is to be abolished, or at the very least that the Minister is to be changed?

Major Lloyd George: I should want notice of that question.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Herbert Morrison: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he has any statement to make on business?

The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Harry Crookshank): Yes, Sir. We do not propose today to move the Second Reading of the Agriculture (Poisonous Substances) Bill [Lords,] which we had hoped to obtain on Friday. We intend to take the Second Reading tomorrow, Tuesday, and we shall also take the Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution then.

Proceedings on Government Business exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House).—[Mr. Crookshank.]

Orders of the Day — HOUSING (SCOTLAND) BILL

As amended, considered.

Clause 3.—(SCHEMES FOR THE PROVISION, OTHERWISE THAN BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES, OF HOUSING ACCOMMODATION FOR THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION.)

3.32 p.m.

Mr. A. Woodburn: I beg to move, in page 3, line 29, at the end, to insert:
Any requirement by the Secretary of State under this subsection shall be exercised by Statutory Instrument subject to annulment by either House of Parliament.
It may be recalled that in the Committee stage we had quite a long discussion on the point that in this Clause the Secretary of State was taking power to compel the local authorities, if necessary, to submit to him a scheme for the provision of houses to assist the agricultural population. So far as I know, this is an innovation in the Secretary of State's power. Considerable exception was taken to the fact that this power is being taken to deal with the lack of tied cottages when a similar power does not exist to deal with the provision of normal houses for the people under the normal local authority schemes.
It is significant that last week and this week two of the subjects which have occupied most of our time have been concerned with tied houses. It is a commentary on the priorities in the Government's mind that the first claim on the time of the House was that of tied houses for publicans; now we come to tied houses for the farmers. It seems strange that this emphasis is given to the Secretary of State's power to enforce the provision of these houses, which are far from being agreed upon by all sections of the people as a necessary element in the community's life.
Therefore, I take it that the purpose of this power is that the Secretary of State expects some grave objections from the local authorities or even some obstruction from them in the use of the power which they are offered by this Bill. I think that the House would desire to have a little more information about how this power is to be used in compelling local authorities to provide, at public expense, tied houses for farmers.
We on this side of the House have made our position quite clear. We want the agricultural community to have houses, which we think ought to be provided through the normal channels of the local authority, where ample subsidies are already provided, and where these houses will be under the management of somebody who has not himself a vested interest in the tenancy.
We also think that it is unnecessary and undesirable that so long as these houses are let under a tied system, under which dictatorial eviction can take place at the whim of the farmer, we should encourage that system, and the provision of more such houses, by any element of public finance. We think it morally wrong to provide public finance until the agricultural community——

Mr. Speaker: Might I ask the right hon. Gentleman to keep more within the point of his Amendment? He is raising the whole question of the tied cottage, which has previously received a good deal of attention. The whole point of this Amendment is whether the direction shall take the form of the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment or not.

Mr. Woodburn: I had almost concluded the introduction to the Amendment which I admit is a little long. It is desirable that this House should exercise control over a gift of public money for this purpose, to which so much objection is taken both within the agricultural industry and in the country.
The Secretary of State may have no intention of using this power in a wrong way or even in any privileged way so far as the farmers are concerned, but I think it desirable that the House should be able to retain some control over the exercise of this power. Therefore, it is proposed in this Amendment that if the Secretary of State finds it necessary to introduce compulsion upon the local authorities, the matter should at least come before the House of Commons and the House of Lords with a view to seeing that some notice is taken of the objections and the reasons for and against. This would at least give a safeguard which I think would improve the Clause. It would keep the supervising of any use made of this power within the Houses of Parliament.
I hope, therefore, in view of the fears felt in certain areas about the use of this

power, in view of the apprehension that some local authorities may be compelled to spend their money on this purpose against their better judgment, the Secretary of State will agree that he and his successors shall exercise this power by Statutory Instrument which will be subject to annulment.
It is obvious that if there is no serious objection the Amendment will make no difference to the speed of getting the job done. If there is serious objection, the matter will at least be open to discussion and to the persuasion of the Secretary of State of the day by Members of this House, who will be able to represent to him the view of those who hold a view contrary to that expressed in the order.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Commander T. D. Galbraith): This Amendment is a refinement of one that was debated during the Committee stage, and which my right hon. Friend found it necessary to reject. We feel that this proposal is far too heavy a weapon to employ for the purpose which the right hon. Gentleman has in mind. My right hon. Friend has here obtained a power which enables him to say to a local authority that it must provide a scheme in accordance with this Clause. So far as my right hon. Friend is concerned, he will use that power only if it is absolutely essential that he should do so, and he does not expect to have to use it often. In those circumstances, we do not consider that this further measure is in any way necessary, and accordingly, I have to advise the House to reject the Amendment.

Mr. Woodburn: I wonder whether the hon. and gallant Gentleman will explain exactly what happens if a local authority does not carry out the request of the Secretary of State? How does he deal with the matter in those circumstances?

Commander Galbraith: It is the law, and they must carry out the request of the Secretary of State.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: I wish to support the Amendment, because I can see that certain difficulties will arise in the constituency I represent and in which the hon. and gallant Gentleman resides. Take, for example, what is likely to happen in Ayrshire. In the landward district of Ayrshire there


is a Labour majority, and it is quite conceivable that the majority of the County Council of Ayr will say, "No, these are reactionary proposals, and we prefer to use our housing resources, materials and labour in ways which are better and more progressive in the interests of the community."
The Department are given power to override the decision of the Ayrshire County Council. If that should happen, the democratic opinion of the people in the area will be flouted and a scheme will be imposed on them which the electors have rejected. I suggest that we are entitled to have the security which would be given by this Amendment.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: I appeal to the Government to think again about this matter. When we discussed the Amendment which the Joint Under-Secretary of State has described as being somewhat similar to this one—he said this one is a refinement of the one we discussed the other day—I imagined the position that would obtain in my constituency, and indeed throughout the whole county of Lanark, where they have made very considerable progress with the construction of houses for agricultural workers.
I can quite well imagine that members of the local authority might still take the view that it is better to continue with the policy they have been pursuing in recent years, to provide houses for agricultural workers, to be occupied by people employed in agriculture who would not be tied to any particular farm.
I can well imagine their being disinclined to make a scheme under Clause 3 of the Bill. If the Secretary of State says, "You must make a scheme," it seems to me that the local authority will feel very hot about it; and it is not enough for the Joint Under-Secretary of State to say that they must do it if they get a direction. My right hon. Friend asked what action would the Secretary of State take if Lanarkshire County Council should decide not to give effect to his instruction. The Joint Under-Secretary of State said, "Well, they have got to do it." But what if they still do not do it? I feel that we ought to be told what will happen if they just say, "We are not going to do it." Will they be prosecuted? Is there any power under

this or any other Statute to prosecute? What is going to happen? If the Secretary of State issues an instruction which is not complied with what power will he have to force a local authority to comply?
3.45 p.m.
I should have thought that the proposal contained in the Amendment is one which this House ought to accept. The Joint Under-Secretary of State said that this was rather a heavy instrument to employ to secure control over what was a very small matter. But it is not a small matter. The Secretary of State will, it is said, exercise the power given to him under subsection (1) of Clause 3 in circumstances where a local authority takes the view that they would not be serving the best interests of their people by making a scheme.
But the Secretary of State is deciding what is in the best interests of the people of Lanarkshire. If the Secretary of State gives Lanark County Council such an instruction, I think that I and other hon. Members representing Lanarkshire constituencies should have the opportunity of discussing it before the instruction becomes operative. We should have the right to raise in this House the question whether the right hon. Gentleman shall give an instruction to Lanark County Council as to how the county council shall go about the business of rehousing the people of Lanarkshire, and, incidentally, as to how Lanark County Council shall spend the ratepayers' money.
I know that the right hon. Gentleman says that a considerable amount of the subsidy comes from the Exchequer, but there is certainly a very considerable amount of money being found out of the local rates, and in some counties the local rates are alarmingly high at the present time. It is most improper that the Secretary of State, by putting in a few innocent-looking words such as he has done in this Clause,
A local authority may, and if so required by the Secretary of State shall.…
—these are the harmless-looking words which have been slipped into the subsection—should obtain such very considerable powers over the local authorities. I submit that Ministers of the Crown exercise powers that are very much less far-reaching and still have to get the approval of this House of a Statutory Instrument enabling them to give effect to such powers.
This Amendment is one which in all respects ought to be accepted by the House. Even with this Amendment, I still dislike the subsection. I think the matter should be left entirely to the local authorities. But it is not to be left to them, and if they are to be compelled to make a scheme, certainly the Secretary of State, when giving such a direction to the local authority, ought to do so in the form of a Statutory Instrument, and we should have some control over that Instrument.

Mr. Robert Boothby: I intervene for a moment to say that this is altogether a new Socialist doctrine, that local authorities are now placed above the law. I always associated the Socialist doctrine with a conception of increased centralisation, with a concentration of power in the centre. Indeed, throughout the six years of their political power in this country they did everything they could to increase the centralised authority of Whitehall and the Government in every field. Now they come forward and say deliberately, "Supposing local authorities do not want to carry out the instructions of Parliament and the law of the land, what then?"—implying that local authorities are to take the field in arms against the central Government of the day.

Mr. Woodburn: Does the hon. Member recall what the discussion is about? This is the first occasion housing is to be taken out of the hands of local authorities, and the Secretary of State is taking power to deprive local authorities of their right to decide for themselves. The hon. Member must have misunderstood the tenor of the debate, and I take it that he is on our side in the matter.

Mr. Boothby: I misunderstood nothing. Indeed, I have been paying great attention to the right hon. Gentleman's observations, and I do not agree with anything he said. The Secretary of State has wide powers over local authorities and everybody else. I think that some of them may be too wide, but not in this respect, and I would never stand up in open rebellion against the exercise of these powers by anybody so reasonable as the Secretary of State. This is one of the most popular Measures that any Government has ever introduced, and I hope the Government will stand

firm in resistance to the continued nonsense talked from the Opposition benches.

Mr. Hector McNeil: Would the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby) remind us of what was said by his right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary in Edinburgh during the last General Election about increased powers for local authorities? I do not happen to have the quotation with me, but I am sure the hon. Gentleman will remember it.

Mr. Boothby: I follow the speeches of my right hon. Friend with great attention, but that particular one I do not recollect.

Mr. J. Grimond: This discussion seems to me to touch on a rather wide constitutional issue. I am rather disappointed that the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby) is not willing to take up the cudgels on behalf of local authorities and rise to their defence. Before we call upon him to do that, I am wondering whether I might ask one question, the answer to which may be of some assistance to the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser).
I understand that, under Section 3 (1), the Secretary of State may require local authorities to prepare a scheme, but, under subsection (6), a local authority—
may in any case refuse to give assistance
in any particular case. Is the conclusion to be drawn from these provisions that a scheme may be drawn up, but in fact may never be put into operation because the local authority refuses to entertain any particular obligation under it?

Mr. William Ross: I think that the question which has just been put by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) is a very pertinent one. It is, in fact, a question which I asked during the Committee stage, and to which I received no answer.
The hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby) has said that the Secretary of State has very wide powers, some of them too wide, but at the same time the hon. Member supports the extension of these powers for the first time in a field dealing entirely with local authorities. I do not think there is any


justification for this, and certainly not in any of the speeches made by hon. Members opposite in the last five years on interference with the powers of local authorities.
Let us suppose that the Ayr Town Council decide not to make a scheme. We have the word of the Joint Under-Secretary, speaking during the Committee stage, that the Government must have these powers to deal with these "recalcitrant local authorities." Those were his words. Therefore, the Secretary of State will compel them to make a scheme, while there remains the power under subsection (6) that a local authority—
may in any case refuse to give assistance under this section on any grounds which seem to them sufficient.
I wonder whether, in connection with these wide powers which the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire says the Secretary of State possesses, he has power to override the power that is given in subsection (6), because, if not, it seems to me that to take these powers is sheer complete nonsense, because the local authority may say that it considers it reasonable to keep to its original intention not to work the scheme, and so the Secretary of State is no further forward.
This is a blundering and rather stupid attempt to force the local authorities to do something against their will and yet, at the same time, provide a let-out for them. Will the Joint Under-Secretary try to clear up the matter?

Mr. A. C. Manuel: Frankly, I am disturbed by this particular subsection of Clause 3, because the Secretary of State will find that some local authorities will be pleased to submit a scheme to him, and that, in the main, those local authorities will be those which have not been building the numbers of agricultural houses which they ought to have been building during the past few years.

Mr. Speaker: We are not entitled, on this Amendment, to discuss subsection (1) of Clause 3. We are entitled only to argue whether or not any requirement by the Secretary of State should be expressed in the form of a Statutory Instrument.

Mr. Manuel: I am sorry if I have infringed the rules, but I was coming to that point. The intention that we have,

as I understand it, is that a Scottish hon. Member shall be able to raise this matter in the House when the regulation comes before us. That would give us an opportunity of putting forward the view of the local authorities, as has been instanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser). My hon. Friend indicated that, in his opinion, local authorities would not be amenable to the presentation of a scheme, and the Amendment would allow us to have, when the regulation was before the House, an opportunity of proving our point conclusively.
In the county of Ayr, which the Joint Under-Secretary knows, and in Lanarkshire, we have been re-housing more agricultural workers through the ordinary allocation schemes of the local authorities, and have been dealing with them either on the grounds of over-crowding, sub-letting or unfit housing conditions.
If the situation is such that we have been re-housing agricultural workers very successfully in comparison with other local authorities who are prepared to submit schemes, would the Secretary of State then feel it his duty to force upon our local authorities the submission of schemes, in spite of the fact that they have been doing very well in re-housing agricultural workers by means of their ordinary housing schemes and simply because of their housing conditions, and not because of employment conditions entirely?
I understand that we are likely to reach a situation in which the presentation of a scheme is not acceptable to the local authority, and in that case we should have no opportunity, unless a regulation were coming before the House, of putting the point of view of the local authorities. I hope that the Secretary of State will indicate what his attitude will be in regard to those areas where there has been already much re-housing of agricultural workers carried out through the ordinary schemes of the local authoities.

Mr. Niall Macpherson: I have only two observations to make. The first is that, if my memory serves me rightly, very similar words to these were included in the Housing (Rural Workers) Act, 1936. My second observation, although I may be wrong about this, is that surely there cannot be many precedents for a Government making Statutory


Instruments directing the local authority to do something without saying in precise terms what they have to do. It seems to me to be a very remarkable form of Statutory Instrument, and I should be interested to know whether there is any precedent whatever for that sort of thing.
We have had so many examples during the past six or seven years of local authorities being compelled to do things which they did not like that it seems rather remarkable, when there is a change of Government, that the Opposition should now be claiming that the local authorities should be left entirely at liberty to do what they please in the matter of local government.

4.0 p.m.

Mr. McNeil: I hope that the hon. and gallant Gentleman will prove himself a little pliant on this subject. We are not asking for much. He said, in quite a good natured fashion, that my right hon. Friend was looking for rather a hefty instrument, but the Government themselves have taken a very hefty instrument with which to deal with this situation. I regret that I cannot speak with any authority of the 1926 Act, but I cannot visualise any Government taking power to introduce a variation of a general intention that houses shall be built for the agricultural workers.
Houses are normally provided for agricultural workers, and the Government in their wisdom have decided that a small section of this provision shall be subject to a Statutory Instrument. If that is so, then it would not be unusual to allow the people whom it is proposed to compel in this way to have an opportunity of publicly stating their views through hon. Members.
The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) put forward an ingenious argument but one which I do not think runs here, because, of course, subsection (6) is overridden by the following paragraph. It is quite true that there is an Amendment on the Order Paper to withdraw the paragraph, for reasons which I do not clearly understand.
Either the Government are in earnest or they are not. If the Government are solemnly seeking power by Statutory Instrument to compel local authorities to act in this fashion, and at the same time are prepared to say that if they do not want to act in this fashion the Government

will go through the whole business of putting up a scheme only in the end to do nothing about it if the local authority refuses to provide funds, then I suggest they are trifling with this House and proceeding in a highly unsatisfactory fashion.
I wish to put two questions to the hon. and gallant Gentleman. Can he tell the House of any difficulties of this kind which he has had with local authorities? Quite plainly, if he can show that there have been recalcitrant local authorities, or short-sighted and unjust treatment of this particular section of the agricultural population for whom he seeks to make special provision, then the House might have another view on the subject.
I can only say from my own experience that that has never been the case. Indeed, I have found the very opposite. I can think of two occasions on which I went to county conveners and asked them to ask their authorities to agree that a small proportion of their allocation should be made available for particular agricultural workers—in both cases afforestation—and in both cases I found the local authorities highly co-operative.
The next question I wish to ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman is whether he discussed this subsection with the local authority associations prior to the introduction of the Bill. If he tells the House that the local authorities said they did not mind being compelled to do this thing without this House having any opportunity to pray against it, then, of course, our case is so much weakened.
All we are asking is that these powers should be subject to one of the minor checks of which this House is capable. That does not seem to me to be an unreasonable plea to make, and I hope that the Secretary of State will agree to what we are asking. After all, if he thinks he will use this power only in very exceptional circumstances, then the argument for the House having an opportunity to consider those very exceptional circumstances is all the stronger.

Commander Galbraith: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House I would only say that I think this is really a re-hash of a previous discussion we had on this subject and to which my right hon. Friend replied fully on 16th October. A number of questions is being raised as to the new powers which my


right hon. Friend is taking unto himself. These were included in the 1938 Act, and they were not altered by the Labour Government in 1946. Exactly similar words to those which now appear in this Bill were included in Section 145 of the 1950 Act by the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman opposite was a Member, and in these circumstances I do not think I need stress the matter any further.

Mr. T. Fraser: Surely, on that occasion the words were used for quite a different purpose. There never has been a provision in any Statute of this country that the Secretary of State for Scotland could have power to instruct local authorities to make a scheme for the provision of subsidies from public funds, including the local rent account, towards the provision of tied houses.

Commander Galbraith: If the hon. Gentleman will refer to the 1938 Act, he will find that was in fact the case. So far as the replacement of houses was concerned, the Secretary of State for Scotland could call upon local authorities to introduce a scheme, but that is not the point we are discussing here. It is whether or not these powers should be obtained through a Statutory Instrument. My right hon. Friend thinks that is a very heavy way of proceeding with the matter, and, therefore, as I said before, I have to advise the House not to accept the Amendment.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. McNeil: I beg to move, in page 3, line 41, to leave out from "assistance," to the end of line 42, and to insert:
(b) the house is in replacement of an existing unsatisfactory house or other premises occupied as a dwelling by a member of the agricultural population.
For the purposes of this subsection "unsatisfactory house or other premises" means houses or other premises which are unfit for human habitation and which are not capable of being rendered so fit at reasonable expense.
In the previous Amendment which I had on the Order Paper in Committee two subjects were combined, and, since the Government bent a little in relation to the first half of the Amendment, it was very awkward to continue the discussion, and at that stage I withdrew my Amendment.
The purpose of this Amendment is plain. The hon. and gallant Gentleman referred to the previous history of this subject when he spoke a few minutes ago.

It is true that public funds were made available for what used to be called tied cottages, but it is also true that from 1938 onwards these provisions became operative only when the house being constructed was in replacement of a house unfit for human habitation, and automatically on the completion of the replacement, which attracted public funds, the original house was either destroyed or put to uses other than the housing of human beings.
It is obviously a very good principle and one which has commended itself to successive Governments. None of us on this side of the House is going to suggest for one moment that right hon. Gentlemen opposite are tardy in their determination to get rid of these indifferent and, in many cases, dreadful habitations which are to be found in every county in our land; but unless the Government accept this Amendment, it means that these less satisfactory houses will be tolerated and no doubt occupied. That in itself would be undesirable.
Moreover it will be plain to the House that it would be a most regrettable backward step if we relinquished control over public funds in this fashion. The justification for the expenditure of public funds is that they should be applied to an investment which the people of the country think attractive from a public health point of view, a social point of view, and, in this case, an industrial point of view. That justification is lost sight of under the provision of the Clause as it stands.
The Government have not produced at any stage a single reason why we are going back upon the provisions which have been accepted by successive Governments since at least 1938. The least they can do is to explain why so far they have persisted in making an alteration of this kind and have refused to stand by the undertakings which previous Governments of their own complexion have given to the House when considering comparable Measures.

Captain J. A. L. Duncan: I want to oppose this Amendment on two main grounds. The first is that since 1938 there has been a very big change in the food necessities of the country. Questions were asked at Question time today about the abolition of feedingstuffs rationing. Increased food


production, particularly cereal production, necessitates more men being employed on the farm. There are hundreds of farms where there are not enough houses to house the men. The problem, therefore, is really not only that of replacing houses but of producing extra houses on these farms where there are not enough men to secure the increased food production which we require today.
The second point is that we still have in Scotland the bothy system, which I think the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenock (Mr. McNeil), like many other hon. Members on all sides, does not like. Two, three or four men often live in a bothy. It would be very much better if these men were able to get married at a young age and obtain houses on the farms. There again, we have a demand for extra houses on the farms, and to my mind the solution is that we should provide more houses in accordance with Clause 2 of this Bill, and more houses on the farms as well. The building of these houses should be encouraged by every possible means. The Amendment, by restricting grants for the replacement of unsatisfactory houses, cuts across those two great needs, and for those reasons I oppose it.

Mr. T. Fraser: I suggest that the two reasons given by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Angus, South (Captain Duncan) for opposing the Amendment are entirely bogus reasons. He gave as his first reason that there is a need for a larger labour force in agriculture; that we want more food produced, and therefore we want more men.
I have not the reference by me, but the Joint Under-Secretary of State, the hon. and gallant Member for Pollock (Commander Galbraith), said something of the same kind on Wednesday or Thursday last. He said that we want many more agricultural workers and that there is a great shortage of labour. I have not the figures with me, but I put it to him that the Government do not take the view that there is a great shortage of labour for agriculture and that they are not at all anxious to get more people into agriculture. [Laughter.] The hon. and gallant Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Colonel Gomme-Duncan) gives his usual horse laugh.

The only justification that the Minister of Labour and National Service has given for calling up agricultural workers is that there is no real shortage of workers in agriculture. He said that when he was answering Questions on Wednesday or Thursday of last week.
4.15 p.m.
The Government cannot defend this Clause in its present form nor oppose the Amendment on the grounds that they want to build additional houses on farms to increase the labour force in agriculture, because they have been telling us that there is no shortage of skilled labour in agriculture, that there is a difficulty at peak labour periods, at certain times of the year, for harvest operations, but that there is no constant shortage of skilled labour in agriculture. Indeed the Government are also winding up the agricultural labour service, closing hostels and dispersing foreign labourers who came here to work in agriculture and sending them to other industries because agriculture is not making a demand on that labour and the cost of that labour is becoming too heavy for the agricultural executive committees to bear.
The argument that additional houses are needed to attract more labour to agriculture is proved false by every decision taken by Her Majesty's Ministers. Indeed, all of us who make any study at all of this matter know that the labour force in agriculture is not going to grow. If we obtain a considerable increase in food production, it will not be in consequence of more labour, but the result of more efficient food production on the farms. We are producing more food than we did before the war, not because we have more labour than there was available in 1938—indeed we have less labour—but because we have more machines. These houses are not required for machines, but for labour.
The second ground on which the hon. and gallant Member for Angus, South opposed this Amendment was equally false, because he said that hon. Members know that we still have the bothy system in Scotland and that we want to get rid of it. Of course we want to get rid of the bothy system, but if the Amendment is accepted the bothy can be replaced by a new house. The hon. and gallant Member is asking that the farmer may still build a house from public funds and


keep the bothy. If it is said that the new house is to be in place of the bothy, we can be quite happy about it.

Captain Duncan: A stupid argument.

Mr. Fraser: The hon. and gallant Member says that it is a stupid argument. He thinks that my arguments are stupid because he did not know that under the 1938 Act houses could be built with aid from public funds in replacement of the bothy.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. James Stuart): One house.

Mr. Fraser: The right hon. Gentleman says, "One house." He can have as many houses as he likes.

Mr. Stuart: One house to replace the bothy.

Mr. Fraser: Of course, but farmers really worth their salt in Scotland at present have got the farm workers out of the bothy and have built hostels for them. The farmers to whom hon. and right hon. Members opposite are seeking to pander still have the bothy, and will continue to have it.
In this Amendment we seek to ensure that when public money is spent on building a house for an agricultural worker, that house will be in replacement of the existing accommodation enjoyed by that worker. In this Amendment we are going so far as to admit the present number of tied houses for agricultural workers in Scotland, but we do not want the number to be increased. The Conservative Government of 1938 thought that that was all very well and said, "Let us just keep the present number." We are not adding to the force in agriculture at the present time. It is becoming less and not more. If there is anything to be said at all for the 1938 Act which was put through this House by a Tory Government, that case stills holds. There is absolutely no justification at the present time for building additional tied houses for agricultural workers.
The hon. and gallant Member for Angus, South said that we need to increase agricultural production and that we should particularly grow more cereals. Of course we do, but everybody knows that the farm worker who is employed to grow more cereals does not have to live

on the farm. He can so easily live in the village, in the little hamlet, or in agricultural house provided by the local authority. He can jump on his bicycle or motor cycle in the morning and go along the road one mile, two miles or three miles——

Mr. Boothby: Or four miles or five miles.

Mr. Fraser: Or four miles or five miles.

Mr. Ross: The children have to do it to get to school.

Mr. Fraser: It is far better that the farm worker should cycle one, two, three or even four miles to his work in the morning than that the child should walk from the farm the same distance to school—because it is no further from the farm to the village than it is from the village to the farm. The distance is exactly the same. It seems to me that if we are going to choose between a farm worker cycling or motor cycling from the village to the farm, and the child walking the same distance from the farm to the village, we should come down in favour of the child and ask the parent to go to work on his bicycle.

Mr. Boothby: Is the hon. Gentleman really asking us to believe that the children of the farmers in the North of Scotland walk anything up to 10 miles a day every day of their school lives? I assure him that it is not true. Let me relieve the hon. Gentleman of his anxiety on that point.

Mr. Fraser: The hon. Gentleman increased my one, two or three miles into four or five miles, and now he is extending it to 10. The hon. Gentleman does not know his constituency if he does not know that children are indeed cycling 10 miles—five miles each way—to and from school. Children are doing that at the present time. That is the trouble with hon. Members opposite; they do not know their constituencies, and they do not know the problems that we are dealing with. [Interruption.] Indeed, as one of my hon. Friends reminds me, they do not cycle 10 miles either.
Nobody can argue that the Secretary of State needs to build additional tied houses to house additional workers. There is no case at all for that. We are not employing more workers than we


used to employ in agriculture. We are employing fewer workers in agriculture, and more machines.
We are saying in this Amendment, let there be new houses built for the farm workers in Scotland—even new tied houses—but let every such house be in replacement of another house that is to be pulled down or is to be used for some other purpose than for human habitation. Let it not be said that we are at this time voting additional money to the landlords to enable them to continue in use and occupation some of the hovels that ought to have been cleared away many years ago.

Lieut.-Colonel Walter Elliot: Some very odd doctrines are being preached by the Opposition this afternoon. I hope that we take careful note of them. We have had the admission of the right hon. Member for East Stirling (Mr. Woodburn) that ample subsidies are being produced under this Bill. We shall be interested to compare that with what he said before and with what he is going to say in a few minutes' time.
We have had the repeated strong point made by the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) that no extra labour has been employed in agriculture in this country, in spite of all the so-called expansion in the agricultural programme that has gone on under the auspices of the Socialists. We are very interested to have that naked admission made now—that no improvement whatever in agricultural employment has taken place as a result of all their efforts. We hope to improve that.
The more particular point is that the bad farmer or landowner is to be helped and the good farmer or landowner is to be penalised. The hon. Member for Hamilton said that the good farmers have taken their men out of the bothies and have put them into hostels. But surely no one will suggest that hostel accommodation is the ideal accommodation for adult men to live in. Naturally, they want houses of their own, where they can have their wives and bring up their children. But, according to the Amendment, because a hostel is built the landlord is not to be allowed to build a house.
If he has a bad house, one which has been allowed to become

unfit for human habitation and … not capable of being rendered so fit at reasonable expense
forward come the right hon. Member for East Stirling, the hon. Member for Hamilton and the right hon. Member for Greenock (Mr. McNeil) who say, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord. Here is money. You have let your house fall into an unsatisfactory condition. Go on. Build a new house—a new tied house even. But if you have built a hostel we will proceed against you with the utmost rigour of the law, if you try to get a grant, and you will not be allowed to build a house in addition to that, even if more labour is needed on your farm."

Mr. McNeil: If the right hon. and gallant Gentleman intends to introduce a manuscript Amendment which says that any farmer with a cottage which is unfit for human habitation shall not attract a grant for a new house my hon. Friend will be quick to reconsider his decision, but that is not what we are discussing.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: We are trying to deal with the Amendment introduced by hon. Members opposite. They say that if a man at present has a bad house he shall be allowed to build a new tied house and get a grant for replacement of it. But if he has already improved that house he shall not be able to get help under this Bill to build another house on his farm, however good he may wish to make it. I cannot believe that hon. Members opposite are going to support that contention. Yet it is the contention which they are bringing forward. It will produce a black market in unfit and unsatisfactory houses.
Anybody will seek to go round and buy some hovel, and then say, "I undertake to pull this house down if you will let me build a tied cottage," and the right hon. Member for East Stirling will say, "I am in favour of that. Go on, buy that house, I will give you State money and I will allow you to build a new tied house"—under which all those evils about which hon. Members opposite complain can take place—"if you go through this formality of buying some old rickle of bricks which used to be occupied by people." It has got to be rather bad because, according to the Amendment, it has to be
unfit for human habitation and … not capable of being rendered so fit at reasonable expense.


We can imagine this procedure going on: the right hon. Gentleman inspecting the building and saying, "Is there any danger that this house can be rendered fit at any reasonable expense? Oh well, we cannot give a grant." But if he says, "Look, we cannot do anything to this house; there is a crack in the roof and there is no sanitation, splendid. There is a midden at the door, the water is coming in, good. The foundations are cracking, it can never be repaired: that is what we want. Now we will give you a grant. You can have your rate money and your State money; you can have your tied house because you have proved that all these things are so." Is this the contention that is being brought before the House? Those are the words in the Amendment. Could anything more ludicrous be conceived at the present time? If any hon. Member opposite wants to query this description I will give way.

Mr. T. Fraser: Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that those words, which he says are so ludicrous, are taken out of the Act of Parliament which was put on the Statute Book by a Government in which he was Minister of Health?

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: But we never said that public money could not be granted at all for the improvement of a tied house. We were not the Government which scrapped the Housing (Rural Workers) Act. The hon. Gentleman does not realise that we are bringing forward proposals by which new houses can be built at a tithe of the expense to the community of the local authority house. These contentions which I have described are the proposals which the hon. Member suggests should be written on the Statute Book. The hon. Gentleman says that one should be forbidden to build any new house whatever unless one can prove that it is in replacement of some house which is absolutely unfit for human habitation. That is the Amendment.

Mr. Fraser: The words were in the 1938 Act.

4.30 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: Under the 1938 Act we certainly allowed improvement of rural houses. It was the hon. Gentleman's Government which scrapped the

Act and refused to allow houses to be made fit for human habitation. After saying that they would do something about it his Government sat quiescent for six years and then produced a deathbed repentance at the end of its days.
Now it seeks to go back on that. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but he cannot run away from his own Amendment and say that he is relying on the Tories of 1938. If that is to be the attitude of hon. Gentlemen opposite no wonder that the Opposition Front Bench is subject to the scarifying remarks of the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) and his hon. Friends. This is the defence and these are the defenders. Of what?—of the Tory Government of 1938.
A more ludricrous proposition has rarely been brought before the House of Commons, and a more unjustified defence than the defence which has been uttered this afternoon has scarcely ever been uttered, that the only reason why one should not have money to build a new house on a farm is that one has reasonable accommodation for the people already living there. Yet that is the proposal of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite.
We are strongly opposed to that. We say that it should be possible to build a new house if it is desirable and reasonable for the carrying on of the farm that the new house should be built. There is no reason whatever why, if he so wishes, the farm worker should not live beside his work and get home for a hot meal instead of having to cycle anything up to 10 miles to the village.
As to the suggestion about children having to walk great distances, I am surprised at the hon. Member for Hamilton. Although Hamilton is a great and noble burgh, nobody could say that it is a great agricultural centre, but if the hon. Member had ever gone about the country at all he would have seen cars taking the children to and from school. I see the cars in my own village, and so do other hon. Members in rural constituencies.
As to his suggestion that rural workers prefer to live in the towns the hon. Member should look at Lanark. Lanark is the proper capital of the county of Lanarkshire, although I admit that the town of Hamilton has in some ways usurped Lanark's noble position. The hon. Member will find that many of the houses in


Lanark which were built under these provisions are occupied by town dwellers and not by country dwellers, because the country dwellers cannot be bothered about living in those houses and much prefer to live in houses adjacent to their work, for which they pay very much lower rent, the result of what private enterprise has provided.

Mr. T. Fraser: I cannot understand the right hon. Gentlemen saying that many of the people occupying the houses are town dwellers and not country dwellers. Not one of these houses has been built in a town; they are all built in the country. I do not know any of them within two miles of any large town or village in Lanarkshire.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: The hon. Gentleman exposes his ignorance in speech after speech. Lanark is quite a town. If the hon. Gentleman says it is not a town he will meet some very vigorous criticism. If he goes to Lanark he will find some of these houses within a biscuit toss of the town centre. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where?"] By the Beech Avenue, which the hon. Member must know very well, he will find——

Mr. Fraser: Where is this Beech Avenue?

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: Hon. Members do not know much about Lanark if they do not know the Beech Avenue. I grew up close by there, and I seem to know Lanark much better than some hon. Gentlemen opposite. The Beech Avenue is within the sound of Lanark Bell. The hon. Member surely cannot tell me that he does not know the Lanark Bell.
Within the sound of Lanark Bell he will see rural cottages built for rural workers which are now not inhabited by rural workers at all. In the surrounding districts he will see the houses occupied by rural workers which the rural workers prefer for reasons of situation and rent to the houses which have been built by the local authorities. Anyone who confesses that he does not know where the Beech Avenue is, in Lanark, has no claim to talk about Lanark.
Our proposal that houses should be built not merely in replacement of old houses but in addition to old houses is a good and proper proposal to bring before the House of Commons. The

suggestion which is being made by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite would bring them into administrative difficulties, and it is such an upside-down argument that I cannot really believe that they will carry this Amendment to a Division.

Mrs. Jean Mann: I am very glad to be able to follow the right hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot). We all admire his wide scope of mind and his very retentive memory. We have today had an example of how conveniently he can forget. When my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) was being "got" at by the right hon. Gentleman for describing unfit houses as
… unfit for human habitation and … not capable of being rendered so fit at reasonable expense …
I recalled that my hon. Friend was a little schoolboy when the right hon. and gallant Gentleman was using his influence to have those words inserted in the Housing Act, 1923, and the Housing (Scotland) Acts, 1925 and 1930. I believe the words were also used in the Addison Act. Therefore, I hope that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman will not imply that the words were conjured up by my hon. Friends.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: The hon. Lady ought not to go too far back into the past. She ought not to bring up these old reminiscences. In those instances, the words were not exclusive.

Mrs. Mann: In pursuing what I have to say I would refer to the Addison Act. I am under no compunction to refrain from referring to any of these Acts. The Addison Act paid all expenses, leaving five-sixths of a 1d. rate. In comparison, this is a very poor Measure indeed.
I would draw the attention of the House to the manual of housing, the big book of words, "Planning our New Homes." All hon. Members opposite were very familiar with that book. Indeed, during the régime of the Labour Government that book held pride of place on the knees of right hon. Gentlemen opposite, who at that time occupied the Front Opposition Bench. Where is it today? It does not appear anywhere on the benches opposite. Have hon. Gentlemen


opposite forgotten the contents of "Planning our New Homes"? They must have done so. There has not been any reference whatever to the remarks made in that book, after months of deliberation, by the committee, of which I happened to be a member, in regard to tied houses and to the development of agricultural villages. Time and again that report emphasises the undesirability of pursuing the line that is pursued in the Bill.
I would remind hon. Members that town planners of Scotland, like Mr. F. G. Mears and others, even Professor Abercrombie, who is not a Scotsman—at any rate, I do not think he is—referred to the desirability of building village communities. The tied house should be permitted, in so far as it was necessary, but not extended. It had been extended too much.
Too much importance has been paid to fathers having to travel five miles but none at all to mothers having to leave a farm and go five miles to the village, or to the children, or other members of the family, having to travel also. Their social life is affected by being around the farm because father happens to work there. Not only is their social life affected, but there is difficulty in creating a community spirit throughout the agricultural areas of Scotland. It is worse than that. It is driving young people away altogether from these areas into the cities, which are already grossly overcrowded.
Therefore, I deplore the trend in the Bill. I consider it very reactionary indeed, when one has regard to the complete picture of Scottish life: the overcrowded cities, the under-populated agricultural areas, the need for keeping young people attracted to those areas and the need for bringing in cottage-type industries. Hon. Members opposite have surely lost the complete picture of our revitalised Scotland.
I consider the Clause very reactionary because it permits additions to undesirable houses which might be admitted to be unfit for human habitation and would have been demolished 20 years ago if our building progress had been what it ought to have been. I ask hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on the Government Front Bench to give heed to the Amendment.

4.45 p.m.

Mr. Manuel: I was astonished at the contribution we had from the right hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot). In my innocence I had imagined that he was merely interested in housing and in our problem of housing provision throughout Scotland. Today he has certainly given me another slant on his views. He was very flippant in parts of his speech and completely callous in other parts of it.
Most hon. Members in any quarter of the House would agree that we have far too many unfit houses in Scotland. Unless we do what this Amendment proposes, and when we provide a new house knock out a house that is listed as unfit for human habitation, we shall not get any forward move, in the provision of houses in Scotland. I am not going to be a party to agreeing to the barrier raised by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman that there is something different between an unfit house in a rural area and one within a burgh or a built-up town. That is the case that he was putting. Whether he likes it or not, we get housing conditions in rural Scotland that are deplorable, are a contributory factor to ill health, and are every bit as bad as the hovels in some of our towns.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: Does the hon. Gentleman ask this House to believe that for every new house built in an urban area an unfit house is knocked down? I wish I could say that of Kelvingrove and elsewhere. I have no doubt that the hon. Member wishes that it could be said of Ayrshire. It is not true. It has not happened. I am not asking that we should put a premium on bad housing. It is the hon. Gentleman who is asking that.

Mr. Manuel: We are discussing the provision of housing in rural and agricultural areas, and I am referring to agricultural workers. In my 15 years' membership of a local authority I have all the time said that when we provide a house for a family coming out of an unfit house we must close the unfit house and not agree to its being reopened. That has happened consistently in that local authority right from the end of the war. I deplore that many other local authorities have not taken that view, which is the only way to get progress.
I hope that we shall not have this artificial barrier that there is something different about an unfit house simply because a farm worker is living in it, and that it is so much different from one occupied by a shipyard worker in a town, or some other type of artisan. I deplore that sentence in the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's speech where he talked about a midden at the door, effluent from a stable for animals which has not been taken away from where people reside. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman was talking about it as though it was a condition that we ought not to disturb.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: rose——

Mr. Manuel: The right hon. and gallant Gentleman did say it. It is within the recollection of the House that during a scoffing and callous part of his speech, where he was dealing with children, he mentioned about the midden. An hon. Gentleman sitting opposite laughed at it. If he wants it to be known throughout Scotland that he thinks children should live under those conditions we are not associating ourselves with that suggestion.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. If he will read the Report of what I said he will see that I carefully catalogued all the possible defects in a house and that then I said, "That is the house hon. Members opposite wish to reward." I am not in favour of a house with a midden at the door or a house with a cranky gable or with water coming through the ceiling. It is hon. Members opposite who are in favour of that sort of house, for it is the man with that sort of house whom they will allow to build a new house with public funds—even a tied house. If he has not such a house he is not allowed to build a new one. It is hon. Members opposite who are defending the midden at the door. I am attacking it.

Mr. Manuel: No matter how the right hon. and gallant Gentleman may wrap this up, the intention on this side is that where there is a house in that category it ought to be demolished, and the whole force of the argument on the other side is that it ought not to be demolished and ought to be occupied for human residence still. I do want to appeal to the hon. and gallant Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore) who has just come into the Chamber,

who has heard none of this argument, to stop interjecting so rudely. He does not know what he is talking about. I am not quite certain that the sort of steps he has taken in the past to protect bad housing means he is to resume those activities these days.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Moore: Would the hon. Gentleman mind specifying those steps he is criticising? He is making some wild statements.

Mr. Manuel: It was the hon. and gallant Gentleman's protection of the Royal Burgh of Ayr, when it had to be forced by a public inquiry and a decision of the Secretary of State for Scotland to condemn houses which it would not otherwise condemn. The hon. and gallant Gentleman knows he supported it.
I want to get back to the theme of the unfit house.

Sir T. Moore: Hear, hear.

Mr. Manuel: I think I have been sticking to it, but I have been drawn into certain avenues; but I am not going to be drawn into Beech Avenue. Sycamore Avenue is much nicer and much more like Ayrshire.
However, what I want definitely to say is that I think we all agree that bad housing in Scotland has certainly been a contributory cause of ill-health, and we are all desirous of knocking out that type of house contributing to diseases. We on this side are convinced that the incidence of tuberculosis is as prevalent in an unfit house in an agricultural district as it is in an unfit house in a town area. If that be so, I think that we could agree that where we can we should knock out the unfit house when we build a new one. Especially if we are taking a family out of that unfit house, we should see it is not again occupied. Certainly let it be used as a store for turnips or anything else about the farm; but let it not be used for a human habitation.
I was interested in the point about more men in agriculture, because we know there has been a great advance in productivity up and down the country of Scotland. We have got to recognise that that productivity is being accomplished by less men doing certain jobs. There has been more mechanisation. There is still room for more mechanisation, and I do hope that we are to go ahead with a "more production" campaign.
There is an aspect of this that I think the Government should consider. I do hope there is not going to be an inducement in the argument from the opposite side today to local authorities to be lax in using the powers that they have to condemn unfit houses. I do not know whether there is anything the Secretary of State can do that can take away from the local authorities the power to step in and say, "That house is unfit, and at the first opportunity it will be demolished." Is he going in any way to infringe that power of the local authorities? As in previous Acts we have had the definite commitment that an unfit house, from which a family is re-housed, must be demolished, or, at least, not used for human habitation again, we ought not to do anything to curb that housing activity of local authorities. To me, it is their main job, this provision of houses.
I do not want anything to be done to give the impression in Scotland that we in this House are not keen on this question of housing and of knocking out the unfit houses. Hon. Members opposite are so keen to please the landlords they are keeping in the unfit house provision, when, on the contrary, they should knock it out. They are prepared to do so in the towns, presumably but in the agricultural areas, they feel they have to be kinder to the landlords, and not so harsh to those people, and allow the occupation of unfit houses which ought to be prohibited.

Mr. Ross: I do not think there is any doubt at all about what we intend in this Amendment. I think that after the arguments on Second Reading and during the Committee stage it must be obvious to the Government and all hon. Members opposite that we have no love for the tied cottage system at all. As regards the agricultural population, we have no desire to see the tied house problem perpetuated or aggravated by the use of public money.
It was the Advisory Committee's Report of 1937 that laid down that the definite aim of housing policy in Scotland should be to reduce the tied houses to the minimum. Following that Report we had the Housing Act of 1938, introduced by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot), who has spoken today—I will not say scathingly, for I

think he was just having a day out. He introduced that Act and put into legislative form the policy laid down by the Advisory Committee to limit the number of tied houses, so that the subsidy was paid for the creation of a tied house on condition that an unfit tied house would be demolished; and what we seek to do today is to limit subsidy in exactly the same way.
It is astonishing that there should be any such tied houses in Scotland, but it has not been denied from the other side, who seem to be much closer in touch with the landlords in Scotland. I think it is amazing that, after the 1938 Act, there should be such houses, and that after the legislation for the rural workers before the war and after there should be houses in Scotland so completely unfit for the agricultural population that they are unfit for human habitation.
Nowadays, we have local authorities building agricultural workers' houses. That was not so in 1938 and the years before that. We recognise this fact in the Amendment. If hon. Members opposite really have the true interests of the countryside at heart they will want to see new houses going up and these hovels left uninhabited.
As the Bill is at present worded not one of them will be closed, unless it is by the desire of the farmer or landowner. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman should know quite well the position in which the local authority is at the moment, and that one of the most difficult things they can undertake is to clear out places that have been condemned many a time. The licensing system is still carried on; unfit houses are still licensed.

5.0 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: That is because there are no new houses. When new houses are built it will be easier to close unfit houses. I wish local authorities to have and to exercise this power, but I think that the way to do it is to encourage the provision of new houses, and to have more new houses than old houses.

Mr. Ross: I do not think that we shall get that under this Bill. What we shall get under this Clause is not a new tied house for an old tied house. We shall get another new tied house and the old tied house will continue. We shall get the kind of thing that has brought Scottish agricultural housing to the


despicable state it is in at present, and if the right hon. and gallant Gentleman was true to the sentiments he expressed in 1938 he would be supporting us instead of making the kind of speech which, if I may say so with respect, did not do him a great deal of credit.

Mr. Woodburn: I was astonished at the right hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove's (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) speech. He was adopting the tactic that the best way to cover up something that is happening on one side is to create a diversion about something happening on the other side, because he created such a lot of caffaffle, if I may so describe it, over all the repartee that he was thrusting across the House that he completely forgot the point he was trying to discuss.
I do not think he has read the Amendment. He concentrated the whole of his speech on the first phrase of the Amendment and paid no attention to the second phrase. The Amendment is not concerned only with houses which are unfit, but includes
or other premises occupied as a dwelling by a member of the agricultural population.
That is a recognition of a position accepted and reported on by the advisory committee during his own tenure of office as Secretary of State for Scotland, who said there was no necessity to do any more improvement on existing houses, and suggested that where practicable farm servants should be housed off the farm.
At that time Mr. Wedderburn supported the right hon. and gallant Gentleman in the presentation of his Bill, and pointed out that in Clause 4 it was directed that local authorities should not have concern for replacements unless accommodation suitable to the requirements of the worker and his employer was not available in the locality, and it was not practicable for the local authority to provide such accommodation under a general housing scheme.
That is the position we are offering the House. Hon. Gentlemen opposite must agree that the present Government are reactionary, even in terms of the presentation of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's own Act, and in face of what was said by supporters from the Conservative side as far back as 1938. In other words, we propose to jump back

to a position which even the Conservatives of 1938 were not prepared to sustain in the House.
The right hon. and gallant Gentleman also seemed to be a bit confused, because he suggested that there were not enough agricultural workers houses, and therefore it was necessary to have this scheme. He then went on to tell us of the agricultural workers houses that had been provided in Lanark which were surplus to demand and were not occupied by agricultural workers; that they could not find agricultural workers to occupy the houses, so that although the houses were provided for agricultural workers they had to be let to other people, and he argued that was clear evidence that the demand was not so great in Lanark since the agricultural workers did not occupy the houses.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: I said they would not pay the rent. The right hon. Gentleman did not appreciate all I said.

Mr. Woodburn: The right hon. and gallant Gentleman now tells us that the agricultural worker prefers the house he is in to the house provided by the local authority for which a higher rent is charged. It is curious that the farm workers' representatives deny that. I am not prepared to judge one against another, but certainly the farm workers' union of Scotland deny that and say that the farm worker is perfectly willing and desirous of paying the rent to get a decent house for his family.
But even assuming that the reflection passed on the farm worker by that suggestion—that he is not willing to have decent accommodation for his family because he will have to pay more rent; a charge which might be levied against more people than the farm workers in Scotland—the point is that this House is not legislating for people who have in mind the lowest standards for their families. This House is legislating for the families, even if the head of the family is not aware of what he ought to do.
Last week we discussed whether we ought to legislate for the habits of the past or for the habits of the future. We take the view that it is a public health matter, a public education matter, a question of raising the standard of people, and that as far as we can we should teach them better habits than they had in the


past, and induce them to take advantage of them.
Let me take another point at which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman scoffed. Is there anyone who wants a planned Scotland, with improved conditions, who does not agree to the proposition that little children should be as near their school as possible? All new housing schemes have been designed so that we do not ask these little tots to cross a main road to get to their school. The villages must be so designed that they are off the main road, so that children can get to the school without crossing a main road or passing through the traffic. I do hon. Gentlemen opposite more credit than they do themselves. I am sure that every one of them would subscribe to that.
One of the problems of farms on which shepherds are employed is to get shepherds to live way out in the country with their families where there is no possibility of a van coming to the door. I know of one farmer who had to provide his shepherd with a jeep to get down to the road, otherwise the shepherd would have left. There is a continual withdrawing of shepherds from certain parts, in the Highlands especially, because of the lack of social life. Nobody here can deny that.
Women will not be content to be away from running water, the chance of getting to the shops, or to lose the possibility of being within reach of what they regard as the amenities of life. Yet the right hon. and gallant Gentleman seems to support the reactionary point of view that because the father does not want to move a few miles the children and the wife must be banished out into the wilderness so that he can be near his work.
Nothing more reactionary has been said in this House for many a long day, and I am disappointed in the right hon. and gallant Gentleman who has a love of the country and knows from experience the problem of the shepherd far better than I do. I can only take it from the farmers and people I have met in the industry; he knows from his own practical experience that what I say is true
All we are suggesting, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) said so clearly, is that there is not likely to be an increase in the agricultural

population in Scotland. Mechanisation and the development of science on the farm will, if anything, reduce the number of people required to produce even more food. There is no need, therefore, to increase the number of agricultural houses in Scotland. What is necessary is to have better houses than the present ones.
We suggest that when this grant is taken under this Bill to build new houses it should be provided in order to replace existing houses or dwellings so that there will not be an increase in the number of tied houses, or a multiplication of that type of house. By securing that we shall carry out the recommendations of the advisory committee, and also the principles accepted by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman himself when he was Secretary of State for Scotland.
I am sure that the present Secretary of State does not want to be more reactionary than the Secretary of State of those days, as he seems at present to want to be.

Commander Galbraith: I am sure that my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) feels very chastened after listening to what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Stirling (Mr. Woodburn) has had to say. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Stirling has, I think, repeatedly qualified to be associated with his hon. Friend the Member for Ayrshire, Central (Mr. Manuel) as being one of the greatest experts in this House in erecting Aunt Sallies so that he can knock them down. Indeed, that was the practice to which the hon. Member for Ayrshire, Central devoted himself during his entire speech, and his right hon. Friend has seemingly been endeavouring to follow him in that exercise.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) made a very profound remark during the course of his speech when he said that he thought that the right hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove must have been asleep last week. With all deference, I think that many right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House must have been asleep last week, because, at the very outset of this discussion, we had the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenock (Mr. McNeil) saying that


there had not been produced a single reason for the Government's action.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State spent a considerable time, on 16th October, pointing out what the reasons were. They are all here. He said that the Government's object was to widen the scope so as to give assistance to all house building for the accommodation of members of the agricultural population. He went on to point out that he wanted a happy, healthy agricultural population, which was necessary for the production of food. I do not know how many other reasons the right hon. Gentleman wants produced. Those were the reasons given.
My right hon. Friend replied to the arguments which were put forward on that occasion and which have been repeated ad nauseam on this occasion. There has been a contention that certain hon. Members on this side of the House, myself included, were quite mistaken about the need for more men on the land, and, in fact, there had been a fall in the agricultural population. I agree there has been a fall in the agricultural population. It may be that at some future date there will be a further fall, but the fact remains that, in spite of mechanisation in order to extract every particle of food we can from the land, there are many farms in this country now employing more labour than before, and which require extra houses to be provided for the workers. There is no dubiety about that whatsoever.
We have had references made to a committee reporting as to what is good for the farm worker—that it is good for them to cycle miles on a wet morning to and from their work; that they ought to be thinking of their children. We have had this argument put forward by three or four hon. Members opposite. They say that to cycle three or four miles would be good for the workers. I took down the words myself, so that I might be able to repeat them. I think that it is time that we thought about what the agricultural worker wants to do, and not so much about what a committee and hon. Members opposite want him to do. Let the agricultural worker look after himself; he is quite capable of doing so. He wants to live as close to his work as he possibly can and have due consideration for his children at the same time.

Mr. McNeil: As the hon. and gallant Gentleman speaks with such authority and vehemence about what the agricultural workers wants, no doubt he will be able to supply quotations from the Scottish agricultural workers' organisation upon this subject.

Commander Galbraith: The right hon. Gentleman would no doubt supply quotations to the other effect. I speak from my own experience which is wider than that of the right hon. Gentleman—a good deal wider on this matter—and I am telling the House what is my experience, which is the same as that of many of my hon. Friends.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. McNeil: I am not pitting my experience against the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's. I am only asking him to give us a quotation and some corroboration from the Scottish agricultural workers' organisation. He knows very well that their opinion is exactly contrary to that which he has so vehemently offered.

Commander Galbraith: I should like the right hon. Gentleman to produce the authority on which that particular union speaks for all the farm workers in Scotland. I would like to know how many that union represents. I would prefer to rely on my own experience. I am putting forward my views to the House, and I have every right to rely on my own experience in a matter such as this.

Mr. Manuel: Not on the trade unions?

Commander Galbraith: We all recognise the great part which the trade unions play in this country. On this occasion, I am going to rely on my own experience, and I have given that to the House. I think that it would be a good thing if hon. Gentlemen opposite considered the views of those who work on the farms a little more than they do. There is no need to prolong this discussion. A full answer was given on this matter by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and nothing new has been produced in the course of the debate today. Therefore, I ask the House to reject the Amendment.

Amendment negatived.

Commander Galbraith: I beg to move, in page 4, to leave out lines 10 to 13.
I have to move this Amendment because, owing to some unknown circumstances so far as I am concerned, words have crept into the Bill which were not intended, and it would almost appear as if my right hon. Friend had accepted an Amendment which was moved in this House, which, in fact, he did not accept.

Mr. McNeil: On a point of order. My recollection is completely that of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, and I should like your guidance, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, upon the usual procedure in such a case. If, as I think, the OFFICIAL REPORT is inaccurrate is not there a procedure laid down that this should be brought to the notice of the Chair at the earliest possible moment?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles Mac-Andrew): I understand that in this case the OFFICIAL REPORT and the Votes and Proceedings differ. The OFFICIAL REPORT says one thing and the Votes and Proceedings say another. The OFFICIAL REPORT is not the one by which our proceedings are controlled.

Mr. McNeil: I am not making a party point at all. I am putting this forward only for our information. If the OFFICIAL REPORT is accurate, which, I think, it is, how does it happen that the Bill is inaccurate and if the OFFICIAL REPORT is inaccurate—I think there is some confusion, when I say the OFFICIAL REPORT I mean the paper regarding the proceedings is, I think, accurate. The difficulty is that since presumably——

Commander Galbraith: They are both inaccurate.

Mr. McNeil: I thought that HANSARD was inaccurate, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman said. I thought that the Votes and Proceedings were accurate, but I am told that I am wrong in thinking that. At any rate, there is a procedure laid down for bringing inaccuracies to the notice of the occupant of the Chair. I think it would be interesting to find out how it happened that despite this inaccuracy we had a Bill produced and offered to the House embodying it.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I think that what happened was that the Official Reporter knew what was intended and put that

in the OFFICIAL REPORT. The House is guided by the Votes and Proceedings, which are the official record. It very often happens that when the Chair says, "I think the 'Ayes' have it," no one takes any notice, and if he says the "Ayes" have it when it should be the "Noes," a mistake may arise. I think that is how this matter arose, although I was not in the Chair at the time.

Commander Galbraith: I do not think we need concern ourselves with how the accident arose, but an accident there has been and something is in the Bill which the Government did not wish to be there and which, in accordance with the proceedings which took place in Committee, should not be there. It is for that purpose that I have moved this Amendment.

Mr. C. N. Thornton-Kemsley: I am a very disappointed man. On Thursday night I had on the Order Paper something like three Amendments and five new Clauses. Although the intention of three of them was accepted I went home a disappointed man because five, or at any rate half of them, were ruled out of order. But as is so often the case, the old saying:
Sighing will endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning,
was proved to be true, because when I came to the House in the morning I found that one of my small Amendments had been incorporated in the Bill.
At last, after years and years of trying, I thought I had played some small part in influencing the law of the land; but, alas, I now understand that this is all a mistake and that the acceptance of my modest little Amendment was due to some unknown circumstances, as my hon. and gallant Friend describes it, and my poor, little, humble child is to be strangled at birth. I regret and deplore that decision, but I cannot fight against it.

Mr. Grimond: I am sure that we shall all sympathise with the hon. Member for Angus, North and Mearns (Mr. Thornton-Kemsley), who has told us of his grievous disappointment. Perhaps I should say that we all sympathise with him except the right hon. Member for Greenock (Mr. McNeil). When I ventured to say something earlier, on a previous Amendment, that same right hon. Gentleman, with his usual acumen, seized the point that the Government must be got out of what


seemed to me to be a very considerable difficulty by this curious apport—if I may so call it—which appeared in the Bill by some magical means—and by which the contradiction between subsections (1) and (6) might have been removed.
Now an Amendment has been moved to bring the position back to its previous state. I think that there might be some contradiction between these two subsections and I wonder if the hon. and gallant Gentleman will go into the matter.

Mr. McNeil: I hope that the hon. and gallant Gentleman will address himself to the confusion between subsections (1) and (6). As the occasion so rarely happens, however, I should like to assure him that the Opposition are very anxious to assist Her Majesty's Government in this Amendment.
I trust that the hon. Member for Angus, North and Mearns (Mr. Thornton-Kemsley) will not think me unsympathetic if I say that I hope he will in future address himself to a more just and wider argument in the hope that we can support him. His argument seemed very sectional and I should not like to sit down without sympathising with the hon. and gallant Gentleman upon this intractable Bevanism in his own camp.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. J. Stuart: I beg to move, in page 4, line 13, at end, to insert:
(7) Where a local authority refuse to give assistance under this section they shall, if the applicant so requests, notify him in writing of the grounds of their refusal.
During the Committee stage last Thursday I said that I would give further consideration to Amendments in the names of the hon. Member for Tradeston (Mr. Rankin) and my hon. Friend the Member for Angus, North and Mearns (Mr. Thornton-Kemsley). I hope that this Amendment will help to ease my hon. Friend's grief to some degree, because I am going some considerable way to meet both those Amendments. I said that I would do so at the time, but that I did not want to put an unnecessary burden on local authorities. I did agree that there was a case here for an applicant to find out the reasons for the refusal of his application.
What I suggest—and I hope that it will be agreeable to both sides of the House—is that the local authority is

asked to notify in writing the grounds of the refusal if the applicant so requests. That will not necessitate them having to give the grounds in all cases. I hope that the hon. Member for Tradeston and my hon. Friend will agree that this suggestion goes most of the way to meet their Amendments.

Mr. John Rankin: On behalf of my hon. and right hon. Friends I thank the Secretary of State for the modification he now proposes. I think we should have welcomed his Amendment even more if the qualifying phrase,"… if the applicant so requests" had been deleted. Nevertheless, he has given us at least half a loaf which is better than no bread at all.
We cannot altogether quarrel with the view that some onus should be placed on the applicant if his application for help has been refused. It is not altogether a bad thing to expect that he will at least show enough interest in his own application to ask the local authority. "Why did you refuse it?" I agree that that is an argument and we do not want to enter into any such argument. I thank the Secretary of State for the fact that he has gone some way at least to meet the case which we put upon the Committee stage.

Major W. J. Anstruther-Gray: I should like to say a word of welcome for the way in which the Secretary of State has met not only this side but the other side of the House. I think that the hon. Member for Tradeston (Mr. Rankin) was going too far in complaining that we have been given only half a loaf. Surely to say that the reason must be given whenever it is asked for is not demanding anything very much from an aggrieved person, if he is merely left with the obligation of having to ask for it.
I do not think that the Secretary of State made quite enough of the importance of the concession which he has put into his own Bill. It seemed to me that subsection (6) had power to defeat the whole purpose of Clause 3. The subsection, left as it was, was going to allow a local authority not only to refuse a grant on any grounds but, what is quite a different thing, to refuse a grant on no grounds at all. All that this is doing is giving public opinion the full opportunity of making, itself felt, because if the local


authority's grounds are thought to be inadequate the owner or proprietor can ask for the reason and the reason will then be given to the world.
5.30 p.m.
An example of an inadequate reason for refusal was mentioned previously in a most unsatisfactory case. A grant for improving two tied cottages was refused by a local authority, and when the proprietor asked why the grant was refused the reply of the county council was that the application was the subject of long and careful consideration by the appropriate committees of the county council, but no reason for refusal was minuted in the minutes of those meetings. That is government in camera, and it would have been a lamentable thing if we had left an opportunity for unsatisfactory hole-in-the-corner action like that to continue. But the Secretary of State has met the point put forward on both sides of the House, and for my part I should like to thank him very much.

Mr. Boothby: As one of the signatories to the series of Amendments of my hon. Friend for Angus, North and Mearns (Mr. Thornton-Kemsley) I want to add a few words. He has scored a spectacular triumph. I suggest now that he should wipe his tears away and reflect upon the fact that he has accomplished a considerable achievement. He has got the substance of what he asked for, and a great deal more than half a loaf.
There is a certain significance about the acceptance of this Amendment, because in these days we are all subject to government control—I use the word "government" in the widest sense of the term—throughout the day and night, and we are continuously being interfered with either by the central government or some aspect of local government. I think it is an extremely good idea to make governments in the widest sense of the term give an explanation for some of their decisions. If that can possibly be done without imposing too great a burden upon them I welcome it, and I think it should be possible in more cases for local or central governments to give reasons for actions which have been taken and which in so many cases have been bewildering.

Mr. T. Fraser: The hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby) very

nearly made a case for my Amendment, because he finished up by saying that governments, national and local, should give reasons for decision that they take. That was the purpose of our Amendment moved during the Committee stage, but that Amendment has been modified by the Secretary of State by the Amendment we are discussing now.
If this Amendment is accepted in its present form—and I think it is certain to be now that we are all one large happy family—the local authority which refuses a grant under this Clause is not obliged to tell the person who made the application whether it has been accepted, rejected or even considered. It is only if an applicant learns by accident by having a word with one of the councillors in the bus queue or in some other way that the application has been refused——

Mr. Boothby: If my application is granted and I have not got the money I am bound to find out sooner or later that I have not got the money.

Mr. Fraser: But the problem is it might be later, not sooner. When a committee takes a decision we think it right that the applicant should be informed forthwith of the decision, and not only informed but the reasons given for the committee taking the decision if that decision were against the applicant. As it is under the Amendment, if an applicant learns, no matter how, that his application has been rejected and he requests the local authority to give him the reasons for that refusal, then the local authority is obliged now to give him the reasons.

Mr. Boothby: Is that not a good thing?

Mr. Fraser: It would be a far better thing if he were given the reason when he is given the decision. If the clerk to the local authority writes to the farmer and tells him that the committee has rejected his application, the farmer then writes to the local authority clerk and asks why the committee rejected the application. The clerk has to write a second letter to tell the applicant why the application was rejected. That is two letters and two postage stamps.

Mr. Boothby: Only fivepence.

Mr. Fraser: Yes, exactly double twopence halfpenny, and it could all have been done for the first twopence halfpenny. That is why I personally regret


that the Secretary of State was so grudging, because he has been grudging. He has not met the Opposition at all on the Committee stage of this Bill. He would not concede that little Amendment to us which the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire told us was such a masterpiece of original thought on the part of his hon. Friend the Member for Angus, North and Mearns.

Mr. Boothby: So it was.

Mr. Fraser: His Amendment was put on the Order Paper three months after ours and proposes to do exactly the same thing. But the hon. Member, instead of supporting our Amendment, put down a similar Amendment three months later. That was the basis of the original Clause that was subscribed to by the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire.
We want to get on with further consideration of the Bill, and there is no point in voting against this Amendment. We cannot do anything more with it. We wish the right hon. Gentleman had gone the whole hog and provided that the applicant, on receipt from the local authority in writing of a decision of that body to refuse his application, should be told also the reasons for that refusal. Giving effect to this provision as it now stands will inevitably lead to additional clerical work and to greater expenditure in postage money. The hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire, with his great knowledge of finance, has discovered that doubling the cost is just nothing, so we must leave it where it is now.

Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: I am nearly always happy to accept the advice of my hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby), and in this case I am happy to achieve a harmonious end to these proceedings by joining hands metaphorically across the Floor of the House with the hon. Member for Trades-ton (Mr. Rankin) and to thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for meeting us in the way he has.

Amendment agreed to.

5.39 p.m.

Mr. J. Stuart: I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."
As the House is aware, we had a full debate on the Second Reading of this Bill on 3rd July, and we had a detailed examination of it in Committee last week.

Hon. Members cannot complain that they were rushed in putting their Amendments down for Committee stage as they had quite a long interval. There were criticisms, but there was no Division on the Second Reading. I think the House as a whole realised that a Bill of this nature dealing with this problem of housing subsidies had to be introduced. It was necessary to make fresh provision for the contributions by the Exchequer and by local authorities in respect of housing in Scotland.
The reasons for the introduction of the Bill are well known. I have, of course, re-read HANSARD of 3rd July, but I am sure the House will not wish me to traverse all the ground which I endeavoured to cover at that time. As a result of the very detailed discussion in Committee, hon. Members are well informed of the intentions of the Government and of the meaning of the Clauses of the Bill. The main purpose of the Bill is to provide additional subsidies for the building of houses by local authorities for the general population; and that is dealt with in Clause 1. I hope that, with the aid offered by the Bill, local authorities will be enabled to maintain and, indeed, to improve upon the present high rate of house building.
The second provision of the Bill is to give additional subsidies for the building by local authorities of houses for the agricultural population. I am now in touch with the Association of Couny Councils and the Convention of Royal Burghs about the method of operating this subsidy should this House and another place see fit to pass the Bill into law.
There are two further improvements to which I want to refer, and one deals with the provision of better housing for the agricultural population. In the first place, the Bill extends the scope of the grant payable for the replacement of unsatisfactory houses; and, in the second place, it also covers the building of new houses, whether as replacements or not. There has been some discussion this afternoon on the Amendment of the right hon. Member for Greenock (Mr. McNeil), and while I do not wish to go over that ground again, it is a matter of importance, and I would suggest that the only difference between us is that we do not insist on it being a replacement.
Of course, that does not mean that we do not want to get rid of unfit houses as rapidly as possible. As my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Glasgow, Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) said in an interruption, the more houses we can build the sooner we can get rid of unfit houses. The Government's view is, therefore, that grants shall be payable whether for the replacement of old houses or not. Of course, we are as anxious as are right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite to get rid of unfit houses.
The Bill also makes grants available for the improvement of houses occupied by agricultural workers under contract of service—that is to say, tied houses. I and most of my hon. Friends have always been anxious to see this provision replaced on the Statute Book so that these houses could be improved and brought up to modern standards. This involves the use of less scarce material than the building of new houses, and a great deal can be done in agricultural districts by this means; and, indeed, a great deal of progress was being made in this direction before the war. I know that the owners of many houses are awaiting assistance in order that they can proceed with this policy of modernisation. It is important, and I was very glad to find this opportunity of including the provision in the Bill.
I think we have improved the Bill by the acceptance of Amendments in Committee. As an example, we have agreed that at least four weeks' notice shall be given to a tenant in future, and that provision will apply both in the case of new houses and in the case of houses which have been improved with the aid of these grants. This provision gives a certain degree of security to the tenant, and I hope the House will agree that the alteration is in the general interest.
I am confident that the Bill as a whole will do a great deal to help to improve housing in agricultural and rural areas. There has been some discussion about whether there is a shortage of houses, in view of the reduction in the number of those employed in agriculture, but, with the Government's aim to step up agricultural production still further, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Joint Under-Secretary said, it will be necessary in a number of cases to provide more housing

accommodation. There is, too, the question of dealing with the deterioration which is bound to take place in houses as the years go by. In my opinion, it is of the greatest importance that we should do everything we can to provide satisfactory housing in the agricultural districts as well as in other parts of the country.
We have had a fairly full discussion of the Bill, although I hope nobody will think I am accusing them of attempting to hold up the proceedings; I make no complaint about the full discussion. When I spoke on Second Reading I endeavoured to go through the Clauses, and I do not think the House will want to hear much from me today, particularly as it would be largely confined to repetition.

5.47 p.m.

Mr. McNeil: It is true, of course, that there has been a great deal of discussion. My regret is that Her Majesty's Government have seen fit to take so little notice of it. Three Amendments have been accepted—one of them might be considered to be substantial and the other two are important—but that is fairly small evidence of the willingness of the Government to produce a good Bill when we bear in mind the amount of discussion which we have had and the amount of detailed evidence which has been submitted about the weaknesses of the Bill.
The right hon. Gentleman said the Bill had two parts, one dealing with normal housing development and the other dealing with the provision of houses for the agricultural part of the population. Let me make this plain: no one can suggest that, in office or out of office, the party on this side of the House have been unaware of the necessity to provide houses of a good standard for the agricultural population; and that we have done.
The main discussion on the second part of the Bill has arisen because the Government, without satisfactory reason, have departed from the policy laid down by respective Governments and by every modern expert committee upon the subject of the provision of houses for the agricultural population. Neither as an employer nor as an employee can I pit my experience against that of the hon. and gallant Member for Pollok (Commander Galbraith) in relation to the desires of the agricultural population. If


he tells me that he knows them first hand, then, of course, I accept that, but I suspect that his experience must be that of an employer. Let me be quick to say that he has a distinguished record, both in naval service and local government, but it had not occurred to me that he bore any of the marks of a weather-beaten, lowly-paid agricultural worker.
Now let me put this on the record, and let the hon. and gallant Gentleman refute me if he wishes. A large section of the organised agricultural workers of Scotland have expressed themselves by speech, by resolution and by publication upon the subject of tied houses and they have opposed that conception. Moreover, they were not speaking as a voice apart. Some 35 years ago—and perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman will note this, too, because he was rather offhand and sniffy about the expert committees—there was a Royal Commission upon housing in Scotland. They put themselves on record at that time on the subject of the tied house as follows:
We cannot believe that public sentiment will permit of public funds being used to erect houses whose occupation shall be in the absolute control of the employer.
It is a conception repugnant to modern times. Moreover, each expert committee that subsequently addressed itself to the same subject came to comparable conclusions. The Caithness Committee of 1936 said that it could not conclude that the agricultural worker would have an independence comparable to that of other workers in the country as long as he was committed to a tied house.
On the question of the improvement of houses, from time to time reservations have been offered. It was calculated by the committee of 1937 that the amount of work which could be done on houses justifying improvement was almost at an end. When we were in office we did not find ourselves far apart from that conclusion. My recollection is that when the enactment was allowed to lapse in 1949 there were only 3,000 applications approved and waiting to be dealt with and, of course, the enactment provided that these could be dealt with.
I was disappointed that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.Colonel Elliot) departed so much from the good sense which he has displayed repeatedly upon

this subject. We know that he came to the rescue of his right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench—an admirable trait—but the right hon. and gallant Gentleman should be a little careful on these occasions. I have great respect for him, which probably arises from the fact that I opposed him almost 20 years ago, but the right hon. and gallant Gentleman many years ago displayed himself as more familiar than the hon. and gallant Gentleman who was the expert opinion upon this subject and upon the very Amendment which we discussed this afternoon, namely, the application of public funds to the provision of new tied houses without the necessity for writing off the old houses which they are replacing.
The right hon. and gallant Gentleman was explicit, logical and most persuasive. Would he like me to refresh his memory? Would he? I should have great pleasure in doing so. He is keeping disappointingly silent. His words in 1937 were so much more impressive, so much more closely related to the fact than his words this afternoon. He used direct language about this business of either repairing these old houses, which he did not think in many cases were capable of adequate repair, or of the application of public funds to the provision of new tied cottages without writing off the old ones. He said:
The new subsidy will be available for replacing unfit houses … It is true that under the Housing (Rural Workers) Act grants are made for reconditioning, but we all know of cases where houses, for reasons of construction or site, are unsuitable for reconditioning; indeed, the attention of the committee was drawn to such cases in evidence, and the committee reported on them.
Further, there are cases where it is only by straining the terms of the previous Statute and incorporating some feature of the house that local authorities have been able to deem that such a house is not a new house, although it is a little like the famous jack-knife which lasted for ever, because, when the blade wore away, they replaced the blade, and, when the handle wore away, they replaced the handle.
It is not worthy"—
this is the language the Government should take note of—
that we should be driven to subterfuges in this matter, and, therefore, we come out flatly and say that, where an existing house is unsuitable, it may be replaced by a different house on a different site, and a grant may be given for such a house."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th November, 1937; Vol. 328, cc. 1632 and 1633.]

Mr. Boothby: What is wrong with that?

Mr. McNeil: Not a thing. My only grumble is that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman did not stand upon that argument today and say to the Government, "This is a foolish and improper and backward step you are taking" [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Of course, it is. It is a foolish backward and improper step because the need for it has not been displayed, because the opinion of the people concerned—not the employer, but the employee, the tenant—has been displayed to be against it, because every expert committee from 1917 onwards has said that it should not be so.
Yet the hon. and gallant Gentleman in an offhand, vigorous sentence says, in effect, "Bolony. What do I care for the organised agricultural workers? I, the Under-Secretary of State, know what should be done. What do I care about what went before or whose opinions are on record upon the subject?"
There were other features at that end of the Bill which we did not like either. One was the fact that the Minister has taken powers to compel local authorities in certain cases to make schemes and perhaps, though we do not yet know, to apply the funds of the ratepayers whether they wish to do so or not. There was also the fact that without attempting to lay down a standard the improvement grant is raised from £600 to £800.
On the more normal housing development side it is a shabby Bill, because the local authorities have not been able to agree that the basis of calculation was an accurate or a just one. I and many of my hon. Friends have referred to the disparity upon the basic figure. I have had more evidence offered to me over the weekend by quite reputable local authority officials—I do not say they are people who could not be wrong—inferring that the right hon. Gentleman was wrong in the basis he has taken for his calculations.
One of the interesting facts which come out of the Committee proceedings is that, by tacit agreement—I do not want to put it higher than that—the right hon. Gentleman has not repudiated the figures which have been offered by my hon. Friends the Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes) and Ayrshire, Central (Mr. Manuel), and my right hon. Friend the

Member for East Stirling (Mr. Woodburn) and myself as the basic average cost of a four-apartment house even when space design is reflected in terms of a saving of £135 or £150.
I must be careful to say that the Under-Secretary, the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Pollok (Commander Galbraith), did not use this figure but offered one to which, as he made it plain, he did not wish to be tied. It is fairly plain that when the provision of £200 is made for the site servicing the cost will work out at about £1,800. I am certain that the House will be greatly indebted if the hon. and gallant Gentleman will give us the final cost of the experimental house at Paisley when he is in a position to do so.

Mr. Thomas Steele: Could not the Under-Secretary have done so at an earlier stage?

Mr. McNeil: I did not necessarily mean that it could be done today. I was not urging the Under-Secretary or the Secretary of State to put themselves out of order now. I was assuming that it was unfair to ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman for the figure at the moment and I was merely asking that he would make it available at a later stage.
If the figure comes out, as we anticipate, at £1,800 it will show how much the local authorities are—I was going to say "being cheated," but that may be too strong an expression, although I think it is one which the local authorities would use—short of adequacy at the calculation of £1,635 per house.
There could scarcely be a worse time than this to thrust a burden upon Scottish local authorities who have large-scale housing demands facing them. The right hon. Gentleman has more than once drawn our attention to the programme which he hopes to complete this year. That ought not to surprise anyone. More than 12 months ago I tried to explain why the rate of completion this year could be high. I take it that it will work out at rather more than 27,000 houses for Scotland. I believe that next year will show a drop. The full effects of the Bill—the full effects of the increased interest charges—will not show until the completions of 1954. The Bill will then be shown to have been unfair and perhaps even disastrous.
We all know that the right hon. Gentleman did not attempt to mislead anyone. That is not the kind of performance that he puts up. The strength of his performance is in his patent sincerity. Nevertheless, the Bill is not even designed to help local authorities build more houses. It is designed only to try to implement the undertaking which the right hon. Gentleman and the Minister of Housing and Local Government gave in February that the increased interest charges, produced by the explicit design of the Government, should not fall upon local authorities in their attempts to build houses for rent.
But whatever the right hon. Gentleman or the hon. and gallant Gentleman say, I cannot, respecting their intelligence, for a moment agree that they anticipate that, unless some substantial change takes place in the methods of calculating the cost of house building, these increases will meet all the increases which the local authorities are already meeting and which will be fully developed over the next 12 months. All of us with local government experience, not arguing a party case at all, mournfully but confidently anticipate that that will be the result.
If that is so, the Bill is fraudulent, for it does not try to do what its title suggests that it is meant to do. It is not a housing Bill; it is a bankers' Bill.

Commander Galbraith: Nonsense.

Mr. McNeil: The hon. and gallant Gentleman says "Nonsense," but it is a bankers' Bill. It is presumably introduced to relieve the local authorities of the increased interest charges, but I do not think it does that.

Commander Galbraith: It relieves them substantially.

Mr. McNeil: This is a matter of argument which we have been over. If the argument were confined to myself and to the hon. and gallant Gentleman I should hesitate to repeat it. But it is not between me and the hon. and gallant Gentleman; it is between hon. Gentlemen opposite and every town and county council in Scotland which has any experience of house building.
Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman quote a single town or county councillor in Scotland with housing experience who has approved the figure of £1,635 and said that it provides a fair and adequate

basis on which to calculate the subsidy necessary to relieve local authorities of the additional interest charges? It cannot be done.
This is a bankers' Bill and not for a second a housing Bill. No local authority in Scotland will be enabled, by the Bill, more easily or more vigorously to attack the problem of dealing with the homeless, the overcrowded and the people living in unfit dwellings in all our big cities and many parts of our countryside. If the Government could really show us such an expectation, none of us would be critical in this fashion.
We shall not vote against the Bill at this stage any more than we could have voted against it on Second Reading, because we know that, inadequate as they are, these increases must be made available quickly to the local authorities of Scotland. But this will not be the last time that our voice will be heard on the matter, and the right hon. Gentleman has not received his last deputation on the subject. With regard to the inadequacies of the rate equalisation provisions in inflicting subsidies for which we have to accept some responsibility——

Commander Galbraith: All responsibility.

Mr. McNeil: Let us be fair about this. I agree that we initiated the Act, and for a time there was reason to believe that it would operate fairly or that its unfairnesses could quickly be corrected, but that has disappeared. No matter who were the authors of the Act, let us be honest with ourselves and admit that both sides of the House will very soon have to address themselves to the problem or local government in Scotland will be greatly slowed down and greatly limited in its operation.
This is a shabby Bill, a mean Bill and a limited Bill. The only people who will congratulate the Government are the owners of tied houses who will have £200 more available for their improvement. If local authorities had been treated on a comparable scale it would have been a much better Bill.

6.10 p.m.

Mr. Boothby: One might have thought, listening to the right hon. Member for Greenock (Mr. McNeil), that after a magnificent record on the part of the Labour Administration over a period of


years, when they built many thousands of houses, we now had a catastrophic slump with the present Administration, that the performance of the present Government in house construction in the cities and on the countryside was lamentably inferior to that of the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman was a Member, and that this Bill was only going to make bad worse.
The other deduction to be drawn from the right hon. Gentleman's speech—if he can spare himself from the internal dissensions of the Opposition for a second—was that the rate of Government expenditure in this country was really of no importance any longer, that it did not matter about putting any limit whatever on the subsidies to be paid; that everything was shabby and mean, that we should be more lavish and that this was a mean little Bill which would not help anyone.
No one can predict with any confidence events in the future, but whether this amount subsequently is found to be adequate or inadequate will depend on factors far outwith this particular Bill. It will in fact depend very largely on the movement of costs in this country over the next two or three years—whether they go up or down. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman would dare to prophesy on that, but there is at least a justification for the assumption that they might go down—in fact, there have been some encouraging indications already.

Mr. McNeil: What about production?

Mr. Boothby: When it comes to production of houses, I think that hon. Members opposite had better at this moment keep as quiet as possible, because their record is nothing like ours.

Mr. McNeil: Perhaps the hon. Member will admit that I pointed to the completion figures for this year. He said there were indications that production costs were going down. I intervened to say that there was evidence to show that gross production had come down—not a likelihood, but a certainty.

Mr. Boothby: Well, we shall see.

Mr. McNeil: There are the figures for the first six months.

Mr. Boothby: How does the production compare with the right hon. Gentle-

man's own production? Silence. All I want to say——

Mr. Manuel: rose——

Mr. Boothby: I do not want to give way, as I shall not make a long speech.
I want to congratulate the Secretary of State on implementing in this Bill one of the most specific—and, to my mind, most important—pledges that the party to which I belong gave at the General Election. No one of the Opposition can possibly say that this Bill has caught them by surprise or taken them unawares. We always said we would take action to restore grants for the re-conditioning of houses in rural Scotland if we were returned to power. We were returned to power, and now we are taking the necessary action.
I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that I am not an employer of farm labour, nor have I served in the capacity of a farm labourer, but I have represented a large number of farm labourers in the county of Aberdeenshire for a very long time. I can report that in that county very few Acts have been more beneficial than the old Housing (Rural Workers). Act. It worked extremely well. We have, stone in that part of the world which is called granite. It lasts a long time and it seemed a pity to let all these granite cottages and houses in the countryside fall into disrepair when, with a little expenditure of money, they could be made serviceable and brought up-to-date. Some might have to be devoted to tenancies, but by no means all.
I think that one of the sharpest and most unnecessary blows which the party opposite delivered against rural housing generally, in the North of Scotland at any rate, was to allow the Housing (Rural Workers) Act to lapse. I am sure that all my colleagues representing rural constituencies in the North of Scotland will agree that that did a lot of damage, and to no purpose, to housing conditions generally. This Bill will be, and is in, fact being, welcomed by all in the North of Scotland, which is the only part of which I can speak.
It was suggested by hon. Members, opposite that it is not necessarily welcomed by local authorities and that they do not like this idea of re-conditioning houses in the rural areas. But they produce no evidence of that. I should like to have specific evidence, or some quota-


tion, which will indicate that any of the county councils in the North of Scotland are opposed to the Bill, or, indeed, do not welcome it most warmly.
The major part of the argument of hon. Members opposite was, of course, against the tied house. That is what they really cling to in their opposition to this Bill. Without being offensive, I think there was a lot of cant and humbug in their arguments. There is not anything like the case they have attempted to make against the so-called tied house as such. I know perfectly well that in some parts of northern Scotland the tied house will not only stay, but ought to stay. These tied houses ought to be re-conditioned.
We want every kind of house, tied, untied, half-tied, the settlement house and village community centres throughout the more remote areas still closer to the farms. Let me say to hon. Members opposite that, whatever the Farm Workers' Union may say, if they ask the average farm worker in my part of the country whether he would rather cycle to his amusement or to his work in the winter, he will give a straight answer. He will cycle to his amusement, but live near his work. That applies not only in Scotland but to a very large number of agricultural workers elsewhere.
The development and improvement of transport in the rural areas has transformed the whole problem of the tied house. It has made a tremendous difference to the problem of school children because in all those areas we have regular bus services, which are doing extremely good work. I am not saying that the tied house is the only house of value in the rural areas; far from it. What I am saying is that all this talk and cant from hon. Members opposite about the tied house is the result of puerile criticism. Many of the things they say bear no relation to the facts of the situation, or the desires and wishes of the rural population.
The hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) made the extraordinary statement that we did not think it was necessary to increase the skilled agricultural population of this country. I do not know where he found evidence, or whether he can quote any specific statement by a member of Her Majesty's Government to the effect that we do not want more skilled workers on the land. If it was said, I venture respectfully to disagree. We want more skilled workers,

and unskilled as well—I use the word "skilled" because that was in the phrase used by the hon. Member. We want all the labour we can get and all the houses we can get.
I believe that if over the next 10 years we do not achieve something like a 25 per cent. increase in production in this country, we shall face a problem which we may not be able to solve. We want skilled labour and unskilled labour, and if we are to get either we want all the houses that we can possibly get in the rural areas. This Bill, I believe, makes a valuable contribution towards that end.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. T. Fraser: Like the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby), I hope that in the next few years we shall have a considerable increase in food production from the soil of Scotland, but let me say to him straight away that it surely is nonsense for him, or for anyone else, to suggest that the only way to get increased food production is to build more tied houses for agricultural workers.
Far almost seven years the party now in office have been moaning and groaning at the absence of the assistance once given to landlords and farmers under the Housing (Rural Workers) Act. It was said to be a calamity for agriculture in Scotland that we did not have the helpful provisions of the Housing (Rural Workers) Act in the post-war period. But food production in Scotland has increased during these past three years, and today it is more than 40 per cent. about what it was in 1938, without additional tied houses.
The hon. Gentleman talks about the cant expressed on this side about the tied house. The difference between hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House and hon. Gentlemen on the Government side on this question is that we rest our case on the conclusions reached by every independent body which has ever examined this question, plus the strong advice we got from the only trade union in this country which has the right to speak for the agricultural workers. I should have thought that when a political body was guided in its policy on these matters by the conclusions of every independent committee or commission which has examined the matter, and when those conclusions are supported by organised farm workers, there could not be very much wrong with the policy.
It is the party opposite who are the victims, the slaves, of their own past arguments on this matter. They are the slaves of the arguments which they have been using year after year. Of course, they promised at the last Election that they would do something like this if they were returned to power, but did they get a majority of the electors of Scotland to support them? Of course they did not.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: Yes, we did. We got a majority of the electorate in Scotland.

Mr. Fraser: The right hon. and gallant Gentleman is again quite wrong. I have the figures here. It was about 49 per cent.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: I challenge the hon. Member on that. In fact, we got more votes than did the party opposite.

Mr. Speaker: All this has nothing whatever to do with the Third Reading of this Bill.

Mr. Fraser: The right hon. and gallant Gentleman is much in your debt, Sir, because you have not allowed me to say anything further on that point. However, this afternoon when we were discussing this extension of the tied cottage principle, the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, speaking from the Government Front Bench, said that he was unconcerned with the views expressed by the Farm Workers' Union of Scotland. It is true that when he was challenged he said he was speaking for himself. But we have a right to know whether the views of the Farm Workers' Union of Scotland are to be taken into account by Her Majesty's advisers. We want to know whether the union is to be consulted in agricultural matters, as are the farmers, and as the farmers have a right to be.
When the Government consult the National Farmers' Union and the Farm Workers' Union, I should have thought they were obliged to take into account what was said by both organisations. But what did the Joint Under-Secretary of State say today? He said, "I have no interest in what the Farm Workers' Union says about it. They have no right to speak about the farm workers in this country. I will be guided by my own opinion." His master's voice. I trust

that the Farm Workers' Union will also be asking the Government, or the Secretary of State for Scotland, whether the hon. and gallant Gentleman was really speaking for himself. No doubt they will get the answer that he was, but the action of the Government in bringing forward these provisions shows that they have small regard for the point of view of the farm workers in Scotland.
The right hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) talked a lot of nonsense about agricultural workers' houses in Lanark being occupied by town dwellers. I do not know whether he will be speaking again, but is there one single agricultural worker's house built in the borough of Lanark?

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: The hon. Member has challenged me. I said within the sound of Lanark Bell. He knows Lanark as well as I do. The houses built by the county of Lanark are adjacent and contiguous to the borough of Lanark. They are not separated by the whole width of a street.

Mr. Fraser: The right hon. and gallant Gentleman said a little while ago that these houses were down Beech Avenue. Now he says within the sound of the Bell. My home is within six miles of Lanark and it is within the sound of the Bell.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: But does the hon. Member deny what I have said? If he does I should like to hear him say so.

Mr. Fraser: I happen to know where most of the agricultural workers' houses are built in the Lanark area. I happen to know most of the sites of the houses built in the Lanark area. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman said that the houses that were built in the Lanark area were so badly sited that they were not occupied by agricultural workers at all, but were occupied by town dwellers. That is what he said. It seems to me that it is a terriffic slander on the Lanark county planning authority and the housing committee—and, incidentally, on the agricultural executive committee, who were consulted about the siting of the houses—to say that they sited the houses so badly that they were not occupied by agricultural workers but, in the words of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, by town dwellers.
The right hon. and gallant Gentleman went on to say that, of course, the reason agricultural workers were not occupying those houses was that the rents were too high. What are the rents? They are £24 a year. But the Government say they should be £42. In justification of this Bill, the Government have said those rents ought not to be £24 but £42. That is what the Government have told them.
Let us come to the most important part of the Bill. Both the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire tried to slide off on the ground that it deals only with the tied cottage. It does not. Hon. Gentlemen opposite would like the House to forget that it deals with other houses besides. They have had representations from the local authorities in Scotland, as have we on this side of the House, and they know that this Bill has been vigorously opposed by all the local authorities in Scotland. We have a right to assume that these bodies speak for every local authority in Scotland.
We have had some criticism from hon. Members opposite of the amount of legislation passed through this House by the two Labour Governments between 1945 and 1951. I give it to them right away that a large amount of legislation was passed during that period, and also that much legislation affecting local authorities in Scotland was included in it. It has been my duty on many occasions to have discussions with the local authority associations in Scotland, and we have had differences of opinion, but, certainly since 1945, there has not been a Bill introduced into this House which has earned anything like the opposition from the local authority associations which this Bill has done.
The local authority associations are still making their representations against this Bill. The County Councils Association still wants to come to London this week to discuss the financial provisions of the Bill with hon. Gentlemen opposite, as well as with hon. Members on this side of the House. They say that these financial provisions just will not do. Have the Government ever given us any real documentary case or any real answer to the local authorities' questions on this matters? No, they have waffled all over the place, because they just have not a case at all.
Let us look at the case, such as it is. There is an assumed cost of £1,635 for the three-bedroomed house. The Exchequer subsidy is £42 5s., and the local authority statutory subsidy is £14 5s., a total of £56 10s. That means that the statutory subsidy over 60 years amounts to no less than £3,390 in respect of every house being built by a local authority. Of that £3,390, no less than £1,620 is additional owing to this Bill, because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenock (Mr. McNeil) said—and for no other reason—the Government of the day wanted to make a present to the moneylenders of this country.
The hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire said that my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenock seemed to have no regard at all for national expenditure. He said that my right hon. Friend was suggesting that we should just shovel out money. The hon. Gentleman must be dafter than some of us previously thought he was.

Mr. Boothby: I doubt that very much.

Mr. Fraser: It must be so; he is dafter than we thought he was. My right hon. Friend had not been arguing that the Government should be more generous with public money. We have been arguing that they should be less generous to the bankers and the moneylenders. There was no justification that we could see for Riving tens of millions of additional money to the moneylenders of this country. These increased subsidies are wholly necessitated because of the increase in interest rates, and they are only intended to cover that increase in interest rates, with nothing allowed for the increase in building costs in recent years.
I said in the Committee stage that we should reduce the housing subsidies, that we should take £10 off every house; and we should be perfectly happy, and so would the local authorities themselves, to see the subsidies being slashed if we could reduce the interest rates payable on borrowed money from the present 4¼ per cent. to the previous 3 per cent.
I am glad to see that the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. N. Macpherson) is in his place, and no doubt he is anxious to make a speech himself. If he does, perhaps he will give us the answer to the question put to him by the chairman at one of his meetings in Dumfries the


other week. I am sorry that I have not got my case properly documented, but, according to my copy of the "Dumfries Standard," the hon. Gentleman, together with the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire (Mr. Spence) addressed a meeting in his constituency, and both hon. Members made speeches about the wonderful new world in which we have been living since the Tories came to power.
Then, question time came, and a most unusual thing happened. Apparently, the only person in the meeting who was willing to ask a question of these two hon. Gentlemen was, according to the Press report, the chairman, Baillie Moberley, who is, I believe a member of the Tory Party. I hope the hon. Gentleman will now give us an answer to that question, because, as a Tory, the Chairman was also concerned about local authority housing, and in fact called attention to the new Housing Bill.
The question was about the interest rates to be paid by the local authorities to the Public Works Loan Board in respect of the money they borrowed, and he said that this was a monstrous thing. Perhaps he did not use that exact term, but he said it was a bad thing, and he asked the hon. Gentleman and his colleague if they would give an undertaking that the Government would have second thoughts about it.

Mr. N. Macpherson: I was only asked to give it.

Mr. Fraser: I will get the newspaper. If the hon. Gentleman now says that he did not give the undertaking, that is a different matter, but he was asked the question by the chairman.
The local authority associations are making strong representations, and they have been telling us that a fair rent to be assumed at the present time is one of £33. The Government say that it should be at least £42. The Government have been saying that the subsidies provided by this Bill are based upon an estimated cost of £1,635 for a four-apartment house, but the Joint Under-Secretary, in seeking to justify the provisions of Clause 1 the other day, told us about his having had the privilege of opening a new house at Paisley, where.
he said, there was a saving, not of the £130 that we allowed for, but of £150. The house cost about £1,600, but what about the services? He said that the cost of the site and of providing the services was perhaps £200. That makes £1,800, and if he had gone on he would soon have got to the level of the local authority, which had put the figure at £1,910.
I have here the Annual Digest which is sent to hon. Members by the Scottish Special Housing Association, and I draw attention for the purposes of my argument, to a chart on page 27. They have assumed a rent of £32 16s., which is near enough to the £32 suggested by the local authorities for a four-apartment house, and now they have said that, with a rent of £32 16s. and rates of £11 6s. 10d., they would break even with the present subsidy if the house costs only £1,460. If it cost £1,600, the local authority would have a deficit of £6 9s. 7d. per house.
If it cost £1,800, which was the cost of the economy house opened by the Joint Under-Secretary of State the other week, the local authority would have a deficit of £15 14s. 9d., that is, at an assumed rate contribution of £11 6s. 10d. in respect of a house let at a rent of £32 16s. But if that house happened to be in Lanark county, where the rates are 25s. 9d. in the £, the total rates payable would not be £11 6s. 10d., but £20. Therefore, the local authority in Lanarkshire would be on the wrong side to the tune of £15 14s. 9d. plus £8 13s., making a total of £24 7s. 9d., in respect of a house costing £1,800.
That deficit has to be added to the local authority statutory rate contribution of £14 5s. Where is the ratio of three-to-one now? It has disappeared completely. I said during the Committee stage that under the provisions of Clause 1 the local authorities of Scotland will have to find an equal or a greater sum of money from the ratepayers than the Exchequer has to find from the taxpayers in order to subsidise local authority housing in Scotland.
All this talk about the three-to-one ratio has been just so much bluff. Nobody ever believed it, least of all the Joint Under-Secretary of State, who is said to be an expert in these matters. I do not pretend to be an expert, but I know full well that the local authorities have


had thrust upon them by this Bill a burden which they are going to find very hard to bear.
When we have discussed these matters with members of local authorities in Scotland, they have all said, irrespective of party, that the subsidies are hopelessly inadequate at the present interest rate and that the one remedy which they would prefer above all others—and it is not more generous subsidies—is a lowering of the interest rate on the money they get from the Public Works Loan Board. Therefore, the Secretary of State and the Joint Under-Secretary of State, who said during the Committee stage that they were going to trust the local authorities, could have paid but scant attention to all that has been said by the local authorities in recent weeks and months.
It may be, of course, that they are not masters in their own house. One remembers all the pious and hypocritical statements made before the last election by hon. Members opposite about giving local authorities in Scotland more power and Scotsmen more control over Scottish affairs, but if there was ever a matter before Parliament on which the vast majority of informed Scottish opinion was against the policy being pursued by a Government, it is the matter of this Bill. Members of local authorities, irrespective of party, are opposed to Clause 1 of this Bill and to the subsidy provisions.
It goes without saying that we on this side of the House are opposed to the subsidy provisions, and it is clear to everybody concerned why the vast majority of informed public opinion in Scotland is opposed to them. It is a shocking and disgusting thing that the Ministers concerned have sought to get away with the Bill on the strength of the hopelessly inadequate arguments they have throughout put forward on its behalf.

Mr. Boothby: Why does not the hon. Gentleman vote against it?

Mr. Fraser: My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenock has made it quite clear why we shall not vote against it. The existing Exchequer subsidy for a four-apartment house is £23, whereas the new subsidy is £42 5s.

Mr. Boothby: Shabby.

Mr. Fraser: It is the reason for it that is shabby. It does not meet the additional cost. The hon. Gentleman understands it all quite well, though he pretends not to.
If there is one question more than another that I want the Joint Under-Secretary to answer when he replies, it is the one I asked him to answer the other day. When he was replying to my question with his customary discourtesy and was saying that hon. Members on this side of the House, and myself in particular, were not interested in providing houses for agricultural workers in Scotland, I asked him to compare for us the number of houses built for agricultural workers in Scotland in the five years 1946–51 with any other five-year period for which records had been kept.
He did not tell me that he was going to answer that question, but if he answers any question at all, I hope it will be that one. I have not much hope at this stage that he will answer the larger question which has been put to him, to the Government and to Parliament as a whole by the local authorities in Scotland.

6.46 p.m.

Major Anstruther-Gray: There was a time when I represented a Lanarkshire constituency, and in those days I should have felt under an obligation to follow closely the arguments of a neighbouring Member. But now I think it better to devote my few remarks to considering the effect of this Bill, to which we hope to give a Third Reading, upon my present constituents. I think it is just as well that I should do that because if I got on to an argument about the rate of interest paid to the Public Works Loan Board, I should soon get on to the Bank rate and then to the economic condition to which the country was brought by six years of incompetent Socialist administration. But let me return to the Bill itself.
What I like best about the Bill is that it allows me to fulfil an election pledge, and I feel that in so doing I am bringing a benefit to the agricultural community in my constituency. At the last Election, we on this side of the House said very freely that we would restore the grant for the re-conditioning of agricultural workers' houses. We are now doing that.
Of course, it may be said, that a couple of years ago the Labour Government introduced a grant for re-conditioning rural


workers' houses; but that grant was entirely vitiated by the condition attached to it that the houses must be untied. Those of us who have a practical knowledge of agricultural practice in Scotland are well aware that the need on Scottish farms is for houses reserved for the workers on the farms. Therefore, if the grant is coupled with the condition that the house must be untied, the whole value of it is destroyed.
I am glad that Her Majesty's present Government have introduced a good grant, not only for the building of new houses, but also for the re-conditioning of old ones, and I particularly welcome the fact that the Government are not afraid to encourage re-conditioning, because it seems to me that, with the present shortage of labour and materials, when there are a great many old cottages with first-rate foundations it is wasteful not to concentrate upon re-conditioning and making habitable houses that have that possibility.
I congratulate the Secretary of State upon his personal courage in giving a lead to England by increasing the grant for the re-conditioning of houses up to a total expenditure of £800 instead of £600. To lead the way for the Englishmen is always a good thing. In this case it is particularly so, because as long as the total amount of money to be spent remained at £600 in these days of high cost and strict local authority regulations about the standard of housing, it was a fact that a great many houses were not going to qualify.
It was patently obvious to people who had seen how prices had risen that sooner or later the Government would require to take a realistic view and allow a higher expenditure. When people are in that position they tend to hang on until the higher figure is fixed. Therefore, there was hesitation on the part of many farmers and owners of agricultural property in launching schemes because they did not know whether they would be able to carry them out in a satisfactory manner under the financial limitation.
Her Majesty's Government now have gone a long way to relieve that hesitation, and I think that the total figure allowed of £800 is very well chosen. It is not extravagant by any means, but I hope that the very fact that it is not a very large figure

will encourage tradesmen to be economical in the estimates which they present, because they know that if they estimate above that figure the chances are that the work will not be undertaken at all. Equally I hope that this figure will mean that the county council, while being strict about every real necessity, will allow some give and take when it is a question of getting the work done or not getting it done at all.
I should like to know the date on which this grant is to be payable and whether houses that were commenced during the last year are to qualify for the grant, or indeed whether houses that have been almost completed during the last few months will qualify. I hope that that is so, because surely if anyone deserves encouragement it is the people who were prepared to forge ahead, cost what it might, and do their best to bring cottages for the workers up to a worthy standard and so help the country's agricultural production.

6.54 p.m.

Mr. Ross: I do not know whether the hon. and gallant Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Major Anstruther-Gray) knows it, but this appeal to the provisions of the 1949 Act and extensions of it is all very nice but, as far as I can find out, very few local authorities in Scotland have been using that Act. I am sure that the Joint Under-Secretary will be able to tell us that, as far as Ayrshire County Council or Ayr Town Council are concerned—and many other of the counties and burghs of Scotland—no effort has been made to put the 1949 Act into operation. It is one of the things to which I directed attention and on which I asked the Secretary of State for Scotland for a categorical answer. Will these local authorities now be able to appeal to this Act and apply the benefits of modernisation only to agricultural houses?
There has been a tendency in this debate to dismiss this Bill as a not very important one. I think that it is one of the most important Bills relating to Scotland that we are likely to have before us for some time. It is consequential legislation. It is consequential upon Tory practice and Tory prejudice—Tory practice as instanced by the raising of the interest rate. The subsidies under Clause 1 of this Bill are designed presumably to


meet the increases to local authorities as a result of that. As an attempt to deal with the financial difficulties of local authorities caused by that financial change, this provision is completely unreal.
Time and time again during discussions on this Bill we have asked the Joint Under-Secretary of State to justify his figures. We have asked him to justify that this was a true basis and true calculation leading to the subsidies that we have in this Bill. But the Joint Under-Secretary seems to carry round with him his own iron curtain of statistical obscurity, for never once did we have a satisfactory answer to our questions
I can well remember the debate on that subject. I do not think it was any coincidence that we did not hear a single speech from hon. Members opposite on that point. To my mind they were shamed into silence by the sheer incompetence of their representatives on the Front Bench. This provision will in no way meet the difficulties of local authorities. As a matter of fact, the case for the inadequacy of the subsidy was proved by the Secretary of State himself. This is a question of Tory practice and the consequences of that practice being inadequately met and being proved inadequate by the pandering to Tory prejudice.
Under Clause 6 we have raised the amount which can be spent on modernisation from £600 to £800, and we were told that this would bring it into line with modern costs. Here we have the Government admitting that the cost of building and of improving which was formerly £600 now would be £800—an increase of 33⅓ per cent. There is no such figure allowed for in the calculations, even in the multiplicity of the Secretary of State's figures to justify his subsidy, which would admit of an allowance of 33⅓ per cent. for the rise in housing costs.
If the Secretary of State is going to hold by his argument that it is necessary to increase by 33⅓ per cent. the £600 to £800, then by that very fact he admits that the subsidy under Clause 1 and the calculations which he has presented to us are completely unreal. I am perfectly sure that if he plucks up enough courage to see them on that subject, the local authorities will press that point.
We have had quite a lot of argument about the tied house under Clause 3,

[An HON. MEMBER: "Tied house?"] We do not know the alcoholic tied house under the same terminology in Scotland. There is no question of arguing the principle of the tied house under Clause 3. It is purely a question whether or not public money should be used to perpetuate the tied cottage system. We have never denied the right of the farmer, if he wants it for his own convenience, to spend his own money in building a tied house.
The point is that here, for the first time, we have the Government going out of their way not only to make Government grants but to force local authorities to spend ratepayers' money in extending this tied cottage system. I am not going over every point raised by the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby) about how much the Aberdeenshire workers love the tied houses. During a considerable part of the earlier stages of the war I was in Aberdeenshire and met quite a lot of farmers and inspected their houses as part of billeting arrangements. I made a considerable number of friends among agricultural workers and their wives.
I can assure the hon. Member that, from the point of view of the women and their participation in the social life of the community, it is no benefit to them to be separated from their nearest neighbours by many miles. It is no benefit to the children when they go to school in the winter months even where transport is provided. I would advise the hon. Member to consult some of the headmasters in his own area about this. Even the youngest children, five years of age, have to walk a considerable distance along the farm road up to the main road where the transport picks them up.
I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows his constituency well enough to appreciate that it would be far better in every way that the new houses for the agricultural workers should be built under Clause 2 so that they would be properly sited from the point of view of the social life and enable all the amenities to be available to the people.
We think that the tied house is fundamentally wrong, but in our debates here we have been prepared to go a certain part of the way with hon. Members opposite. We even said that it was necessary to permit the existence of tied


houses, but hon. Members opposite wanted everything. When it comes to a question affecting the ratepayer's money and of Treasury grants being paid out for the perpetuation and the extension of the system, we oppose it.
There is another question that I should like to put to the Secretary of State. We have had so many hesitant and confusing answers about this. There is the question of how much the grant is going to be under Clause 3. I can remember the Minister telling us that the Bill was quite definite that the maximum grant under Clause 3 was £300 and that there was no question of half the cost of the house being paid. I do not know if he still holds to that answer. The Clause says:
Assistance under this section shall be given by way of payment on the completion of the house of a lump sum not exceeding either—

(a) one half of the cost of the house; or
(b) two hundred and forty pounds in the case of a house containing three apartments, or three hundred pounds in the case of a house containing more than three apartments."
He definitely said, in answer to a question, that the maximum amount would be £300. If half the cost of the house was more, then automatically the lower grant would be paid. Does he really mean that? He himself told us that it has been found necessary for the modernisation of a house to raise the limit to £800; 50 per cent. of that £800 is by way of a subsidy. In other words, £100 more is obtainable under this Bill to improve a house and modernise it, to put in a bathroom or whatever the Secretary of State specifies as modernization——

Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: Not under the Bill.

Mr. Ross: Under the 1949 Act, and Clause 6 of this Bill is purely an extension of that Act; and we have had an announcement of the revision of that figure——

Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: The announcement of the revision of the figure is not under this Bill, which is all I said.

Mr. Ross: I do not think that invalidates my argument at all. Under Clause 6 of this Bill a modernisation grant of £800 will be permitted as a maximum; 50 per cent. of that £800—

that is, £400—will be payable, three-quarters by the Government and 25 per cent. by the local authority; in other words, a subsidy of £400 for modernising a house. But we have been told by the Secretary of State that if a new house containing more than four apartments is built, only £300 is payable. I wonder whether he still holds to that argument, or does Clause 3 really mean what I think it means, that landowners are to get 50 per cent. of the cost of the house if the Government think fit?
I think it is disgraceful that we have reached the Third Reading before getting these points clear. It is demonstrative of the complete confusion which exists on the Conservative Front Bench. The new wind that has been sweeping through St. Andrew's House has not been so very effective so far.
I think the most significant phrase in this Bill is in Clause 3, whereby the Secretary of State takes power to compel a local authority against its will to draw up a scheme for assisting the extension of the tied house system. There is no such power in Clause 2. It shows the Conservative outlook on the housing problem. The sighs of hon. Members opposite when we were dealing with the financial provisions of the Bill prove the same thing. They are not concerned with the local authorities' difficulties. They do not want the local authorities to succeed in properly tackling the question of the siting of houses in rural communities. They want rural housing to be dealt with under Clause 3 and by the subsidising of tied cottages. The hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire said that we wanted all kinds of houses in Scotland. We want good houses in Scotland——

Mr. Boothby: Hear, hear.

Mr. Ross: —and we want shut down as quickly as possible the agricultural slums that grew out of the tied cottage system. The hon. Member said how wrong it was that the working of the 1926 Act had been discontinued in 1945. But did he never read any of the reports relating to the working of that Act? Perhaps the right hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) could tell him some of the things that the Advisory Committee said about it. They said that only 50 per cent. of the money spent was spent wisely. They spoke of it being a grave waste of public money—this


was in 1937—and they advised the continuance of it for only two years more. It was continued until 1945, and then three years after that.
It is because of that that I am rather suspicious of Clause 6. Let hon. Members remember that local authorities have been castigated in the past for not carrying out their statutory obligations in dealing with the question of unfit houses. I am rather suspicious whether we are going to have perpetuated in this modernisation of tied cottages by Government subsidy a lower standard of housing for the agricultural workers than for anyone else in the community. We have had this in Scotland for so long under this type of Government and this type of Secretary of State.
We want to see removed as quickly as possible these housing blots in the agricultural areas. We think that the Clause 2 procedure is the proper way to do it, and we think that the application of Clause 3 and the subsidising of further tied cottages by Government and ratepayers' money is the wrong way. That is why we regret this Bill.
We have already said how unreal we think the subsidies are. But they are an improvement. Local authorities are finding it very difficult to envisage future building there is not a local authority which can look with ease at its future financial position, even under this Bill; but without this improvement it would be quite impossible for us to support this Bill, and we regret the Tory practice and the Tory prejudice which makes this necessary.

7.10 p.m.

Mr. N. Macpherson: We have traversed a great many of the arguments that have been advanced on various parts of the Bill, and I do not intend to traverse them all again, but there are one or two points with which I should like to deal. I should like to deal first with the point mentioned by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross)—the question of tied cottages. We on this side of the House regard the matter from a realistic point of view.
It is true, of course, that agricultural houses, under Clause 2, can be built and, no doubt, they will continue to be built. It is also true that there are a tremendous lot of houses that are well worth improving. We propose that those houses should

be improved. I am very glad that grants are now to be made to enable those houses to be improved, in fulfilment of our election pledge. From the purely financial point of view it is surely worth while. If we are to give a grant to build a new agricultural house under a county council scheme it is going to cost the Exchequer over £50 per house for 60 years. If, on the other hand, we are going to improve an existing house which is to last 30 years it is to cost the Exchequer £300 in all.
Turning to the building of new houses, the hon. Member for Kilmarnock says, "How immoral it is to build any more new tied houses in view of the fact that past committees have reported unfavourably towards them." What are we doing here? We are arranging for existing agricultural houses to be replaced, or new houses to be built. In several cases one has the quite ridiculous situation that the replacement of houses under the old Act meant that before a grant could be obtained the roof of the house had to be taken off and if one wanted to use the house for anything else the roof had to be put back on.
The right hon. Member for East Stirling (Mr. Woodburn), addressing the House on a previous stage, said that we did not need more agricultural houses. Even if that were true in the aggregate—and we say that we are going to have more people on the land—it would not follow that we should not have more agricultural houses on any one farm. On some farms it may be necessary to have more agricultural houses. We say, "Let us build the additional houses where they are required and give the grant for them." The Government are to be congratulated for having carried out these pledges within their first year of office.
I want to say a few words in regard to the speech of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser)—whom I am sorry not to see in his place. He said that by this Bill local authorities are having thrust upon them a burden which they are going to find it very hard to bear. What is the fact? It is that the last legislation giving grants for local authority houses was in 1946. Between that time and the time when the Labour Government went out of office building costs rose by 40 per cent. or so. Those costs were flung upon either the local


authority or the tenant. I admit that they were largely flung upon the local authority.
But what did the Opposition do about that when they were in office? They did absolutely nothing. Their criticism of this Bill throughout is directed against their own conduct. They say that at the very best the increases in the Exchequer grant only cover the increase in the borrowing rate for local authorities. If that is so it is very remarkable that there should be such an extraordinary disparity between the grants for Scotland under this Bill and the grants for England under the English Bill. The grant for Scotland, in respect of a three-apartment house, is £18 5s.; for a four-apartment house, £19 5s.; and for a five-apartment house, £21 5s. In the English Bill they are £10 4s.
Can it possibly be maintained that the extra cost of building in Scotland is twice as much as in England? That is what the Opposition argument implies. Of course that is not true, and we in Scotland are getting very fair treatment under this Bill. The Opposition know that we are getting, at the minimum, £16 more for an agricultural house than in England and yet even on the most unfavourable calculations to the Department that could not be justified on a comparison of costs of building in England and Scotland. The trouble has been that whereas in the past the Department were allowed to arrive at figures in the supposition that we would give them credit for doing it fairly, in this case they have been attacked by local authorities who naturally want more money if they can get it, so as to reduce the burden on the rates at the taxpayer's expense, and those local authorities have been fully backed up by the Opposition.
Surely we should take a more sensible and realistic view in cases like this, instead of taking the view of the right hon. Gentleman who first of all called it a shabby Bill; then said that the Scottish people and local authorities were being cheated, and finally that it was downright fraudulent? That is carrying exaggeration to extremities and defeating one's own case. We know that in this Bill we are carrying out a pledge; secondly, we are increasing the grants for the building of houses to cover the rise in

the Bank rate and, according to the figures of the Department, a good deal more.

Mr. Ross: indicated dissent.

Mr. Macpherson: The hon. Member shakes his head. Very well; let us look at the memorandum submitted to us by the Association of County Councils in Scotland, Association of Counties of Cities in Scotland and the Convention of Royal Burghs. They said:
The proposed Exchequer contribution of £42 5s. represents an increase of £19 5s. per annum, but the increase in the Public Works Loan Board rate of interest from 3 per cent. to 4¼ per cent. represents an increase in debt charges of £19 6s. 9d. per annum.
Even on their calculations the difference is only a matter of a few pence; so one can say that the Exchequer contribution covers the increase in interest rates.
We know what the benefits of the increase in these rates have been to the country as a whole. Tributes have been paid to our financial policy by O.E.E.C. and other bodies and by the Ambassador-at-Large of the United States. It is having its effect at the present time. It is of course reflected in interest rates, and it would be wrong that special interest rates should be made available to the local authorities; but in this Bill we are making arrangements to see that they are fully covered from that point of view—and according to the Department's figures there is something in hand.
The increase dates back from February, so that there can be no complaint, for that was the time when the interest rate was raised. This Bill is extremely generous and it carries out a pledge, and I should like once more to congratulate my right hon. Friend on introducing it.

7.19 p.m.

Mr. Woodburn: The speech to which we have just listened is a clear case of special pleading and it seems to indicate a guilty conscience—that something had to be defended and excused on the part of the Government. The hon. Gentleman was right about that; but his excuse and defence were not at all accurate.
He says that the Government have attempted to replace the loss to the local authorities of the increased interest charge made by the Public Works Loan Board. Nobody has quarrelled with that. He then says, "Let us build the houses where


they are required." Nobody has been challenging that. Under the Act of Parliament of the Labour Government, before any houses are built in an agricultural area, the executive council representing the farmers of the area are asked where they want the houses. Who are the best people to say where the houses are required? Is it hon. Members opposite, or is it the farmers in the area? If the farmers in the area do not know where they want the houses, nobody else is likely to know. We therefore provided for houses to be built where required at the cost of the authority.
The hon. Gentleman also criticised one of my hon. Friends for having said that the burden would be hard to bear. He either was not listening or he misunderstood what was said, because the complaint was not of the burden of housing under the Act of the Labour Government; it was a complaint about having to sacrifice the rates and to pay out local authority money to build houses which would become private property. That will indeed be a hard burden for most local authorities to bear and more than the average Scotsman will be able to swallow.
The hon. Member for Dumfries also seemed to think that the subsidy offered by the Government was too low. Is that his opinion? Does he think the subsidy offered is not large enough? He said that the subsidy of the Labour Government was too low—and it has remained unchanged by this Government. Does he suggest that the Government are carrying on something which was done by the Labour Government and which was bad? Does he mean that the Labour Government were mean and that this Government are equally mean; because if he condemns the Labour Government he is automatically condemning his right hon. Friend, for the subsidy has not been improved by a penny.

Mr. N. Macpherson: The implication of all the arguments we have heard from the other side is that the subsidies should be increased in order to take the burden off the rates and the rents. If that is so now, it was equally so in 1951.

Mr. Woodburn: It was not equally so. There have been a lot of changes. In any event, that was not the argument of my hon. Friends. What my hon. Friends have complained about is that

they have never been given accurate figures to show how the amount is made up. There have been continual discussions on the basis of the local authorities' figures and on the basis of the Secretary of State's figures.
As I said the other day, it is desirable that we should be given some figures which both the local authorities and the Secretary of State accept as the facts of the situation. Such figures have never been presented, and I respectfully suggest that we have been placed in a position in which we can form no opinion about whether the subsidies are too low or too high until we get the facts of the case. If the hon. Member for Dumfries says local authorities should not have any more, I hope he will make that clear and not make the point in a negative way as if he were complaining about the Labour Party.
The hon. Gentleman sneered at us for doing our duty and putting the position of the council before the House, but he should keep in mind the fact that many of these are Conservative councils who have no interest in trying to bring discredit on the Government. If they are expressing this point of view, it is because they seriously believe it, and it is the duty of the Secretary of State and the Government Departments to make clear to local authorities where they stand.
In my opinion, the Bill is one of a series of mistakes. The first mistake, of course, was when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in order to deal with the financial position of the country, raised the Bank rate to deter the use of capital; and the mistake made on that occasion was that it was thought necessary immediately to raise the rate of interest charged by the Public Works Loan Board. The fact that it was a mistake was admitted when the Bank rate was raised a second time, because on this occasion the Public Works Loan Board's rate of interest was not raised at all.
The increase in the rate of interest on the first occasion brought repercussions which, instead of encouraging houses to be built, would have brought house building to an end. The Government found it necessary to raise the subsidies to compensate local authorities fully for the increase in the interest rate


charged by the Public Works Loan Board. That is the origin of the Bill and that is the origin of the mistakes which have been made. We do not object to the balancing of the losses of local authorities by this method; in fact, we shall vote for the Bill on that account alone.
But once the Bill was accepted for that purpose, it was used as a Trojan horse in order to introduce many other things for which there is no need and on which there has been no agreement. The Bill, therefore, makes no contribution towards assisting local authorities to build houses. The position is put back to where it was before the change in the Bank rate, and it would have been better had the conditions which made the Bill necessary never arisen at all.
The question arises: are these subsidies enough? As I have said, we have not been given clear figures. In the middle of the debate we had an indication of what the Government think because, following a curious interruption of the business by a little comedy play by two hon. Members opposite, who pretended to put innocent questions about raising the limit of the amount to be spent on repairs and improvements, the Government indicated that it is now necessary to raise the amount which can be spent on repairs from £600 to £800.
That is a rise of 33⅓ per cent. I should like the Secretary of State, or whoever is to reply to the debate, to tell us what reply he will make to local authorities on this point. If the Government think it necessary to agree to a 33⅓ per cent. rise in the amount spent on improvements—a 33⅓ per cent. rise since we left office—what arguments are to be advanced to the local authorities to show why their subsidies should not be increased? It will be interesting to hear the reply.
The main part of the debate has turned on the question of tied houses, and I have already said a good deal about that. We have been challenged on what the farm workers themselves want, and to my surprise the Under-Secretary of State has set himself up as the expert spokesman for the farm workers. I beg leave to doubt it. The right hon. and gallant Member for

Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) also disputed the suggestion that it was better to have the houses near the schools, for the benefit of the children and the mothers, than for the children and the mothers to do the travelling in order that the man could be near his work.
It is interesting to read the farm workers' view. The report on rural housing said that tied houses are scattered over the farms, which makes for loneliness and a lack of social life. No hon. Member opposite can deny that that is a great handicap in getting farm workers. The report also says that the children often have bad roads and long distances to travel to school—and that is also a handicap in getting shepherds or farm workers. It says that all health or social services are made more costly because the people are further away from the doctors and further away from the treatment, and that the services are less efficient because of the widely scattered houses; and worst of all is the necessity for the farm worker to move his home every time he changes his employer.
The farm workers admit that there is a need for tied houses, and we are not discussing whether there should be tied houses. Their point of view is this: any farmer's convenience can be met by having one tied house on each farm, and there is nothing to prevent any landowner or any farmer from having a tied house on his farm if he is willing to pay for it. If he wants more and is willing to pay for them, nobody proposes to stop him from having them. But the point is that it is not the duty of the State to provide public money for the increase in the number of those tied houses until the conditions of the occupancy are such that farm workers are freely prepared to accept them.
We were given the reason of economy. But surely there is no economy in having the children brought to school. The right hon. Gentleman told us that they would be brought by motor car. It is obviously some while since the Secretary of State went there, because I guarantee that he never goes to the northern counties without being told what the cost of taking the children to school is. Indeed, that was one of the first economies the educational authorities made—cutting down the


cost of taking the children to school. So there will be much more walking now than there was.
The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Boothby) nearly shed tears over a man who had to walk to work in winter. We are to feel sorry for him, but not, it seems, for his children, and his wife who has to get from the farm to wherever she wants to do her purchasing or carry on her social life.
The Bill is such that the local authorities say, "Thank you for nothing." In other words, it is no contribution to any improvement in housing in Scotland; it is no contribution to the building of more houses. It is a medium for turning back the clock—for a return to conditions that, as we have seen, Conservatives in 1938 repudiated. I think that is tragic. It is because of a foolish pledge that was made.
I have never known a Government who got themselves into so much trouble in trying to carry out so many foolish pledges made before an Election. The Prime Minister has said that the Government are not bound by any such pledges. Now he seems to regard as his main duty that of carrying out the most foolish pledges ever made by a Government party—denationalisation of transport, denationalisation of the steel industry, and this one, which will destroy a great deal of the economy of the country.
We cannot pass this Bill with enthusiasm, but we do not want to withhold the subsidies from the councils, so we accept the Bill in its present form, although we wish there had been no need for it, and no interference with the rate of interest of the Public Works Loan Board, considering the progress that was being made. The enthusiasm of this Government for tied houses—public houses and tied cottages in the rural areas—is one of the deplorable aspects of our modern public life.

7.32 p.m.

Commander Galbraith: The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenock (Mr. McNeil) started by saying that the Government had accepted only three Amendments put forward by the Opposition, and he went on to say that that was not indicative of the willingness of the Government to produce a good Bill. I would say to him that it all depends upon

what he and I may think is a good Bill. The fact of the matter is, of course, that all the Amendments which were put forward by the Opposition—or many of them—were wrecking Amendments and were against the declared policy of the Government, and it was perfectly obvious from the very start that they could not be accepted. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Stirling (Mr. Woodburn) complained that the Government had never presented the figures on which they arrived at the basis of the subsidy. He is wholly mistaken.

Mr. Woodburn: No agreed figures.

Commander Galbraith: When there is disagreement one cannot get agreed figures. It takes two sides to agree.
I pointed out to the House on Second Reading exactly how the figures were arrived at, and I told the House all that had been fully explained to the local authorities. There is no question of there being any error whatsoever in the figures on which the Government calculated the subsidy. There may be a difference of opinion between the Government and the local authorities as to whether they are the figures that should have been adopted. That is quite clear. The local authorities say that a different set of figures should have been adopted, but we take the figures, as I have explained to the House time and time again, for the last six months of last year and for the first month of this year and base our subsidy on the calculations on those figures.

Mr. Woodburn: I do not want to interrupt, but the hon. and gallant Gentleman must agree that local authorities have been quoted in regard to the cost of building houses in certain areas. When asked about this, there was great difficulty in his saying, for instance, about a particular house in Paisley, whether the cost included certain things or not. I simply suggested that these sums ought to be facts about which there could be no disagreement.

Commander Galbraith: The right hon. Gentleman should know that the information available to the Scottish Office is very full information, and the whole of the tenders was taken, and there is no dubiety about that at all. I think that where hon. Gentlemen are led astray is that they will quote the figure of £1,635.


That is not, of course, the figure. The figure of £1,765 is not greatly different from the £1,900 of the local authorities.
The right hon. Member for Greenock asked me to refute if I could that the union that represented the agricultural workers had expressed its view on the tied house. I would not think of refuting that for one moment. It has indeed expressed its opposition to the tied house, but I cannot agree with it that the tied house is repugnant to the nation, because there are thousands and thousands of them, and more of them going up every day, not only in agricultural areas but in many other places.
Then the right hon. Gentleman referred to the position of the 1937 Committee which said that work under the Housing (Rural Workers) Act had really come to an end, but I would say to him that there has been a great change in the financial situation since then. It may not have been then worth while to spend £300 or £400 in re-conditioning an old cottage in 1937, and it may be well worth while re-conditioning it now, for then one could produce a good cottage for £500, and it would have been ridiculous to have spent an equal sum on re-conditioning it. That is very much changed now that the cost is so high.

Mr. McNeil: I think the hon. and gallant Gentleman said I made a point to which I certainly did not draw attention, but I think he would also agree that this Committee drew attention to the fact that in its opinion many of the houses were incapable of being brought to what they considered to be a reasonable standard.

Commander Galbraith: There may be a difference of opinion about that. Many of the houses deemed to be incapable of that standard are, with the spending of sufficient money, which it is economical to do, at the present time, becoming very good houses. I cannot agree that there was any question of cheating, such as the right hon. Gentleman mentioned.
The right hon. Gentleman went on to deal with the increase in the rate of interest. Let me take the remarks of the right hon. Member for East Stirling with those of the right hon. Member for Greenock on this question of interest rates, and let me say that the Chancellor

of the Exchequer said, when he announced the increase in the interest rate in November, that he would enter into negotiations which would compensate the local authorities, so far as housing was concerned, in respect of the increase in that rate. We have to consider the situation by and large, the great improvement that has taken place in the financial position of the country as well as what hon. Gentlemen opposite consider to be the unfortunate result of the increase on the housing of the local authorities.
It was also said that there could not be a worse time to throw a further burden on the local authorities. I think the right hon. Gentleman may apply that equally well to the taxpayers as to the ratepayers. The present time would be a very bad time to throw a very much heavier burden on the taxpayers. I should have thought myself, though hon. Gentlemen opposite do not seem to think so, that my hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby) answered practically the whole of their criticisms, and to such effect that they did not like it very much.
However, I turn to some of the remarks of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser). Let me assure him of this at once. He asked me whether the views of the Farm Servants' Union had been taken into account by my right hon. Friend. My reply to that is simply this. My right hon. Friend takes into consideration the views of all representative bodies whatsoever. When I was talking as I was at that particular stage, I was expressing my views as to my experience, and I think I had the right to lay them before hon. Gentlemen.
The hon. Member said that the Bill has been opposed by the local authority associations. So far as I know, only Clause 1 has been opposed. The local authority associations are perfectly right in pressing the Government for every penny they can get, but they have got it and I do not think they can expect any more at the present time. I was sorry the hon. Gentleman accused me of discourtesy, and that being so I do not think there is any need for me to answer the questions he put to me at that stage.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Major Anstruther-Gray) asked me, as I understood his question, from what date the


increased limit of £800 will operate. The date which appears in the Order laid on the Table of the House is that all applications approved after 1st November will be entitled to the upper limit of £800.
The right hon. Member for East Stirling considers the Bill a mistake. I do not. I, with my right hon. and hon. Friends, hope that it will result in an improvement in our housing programme, and also in a great improvement in the housing of the agricultural workers of this country.

Mr. Ross: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman, before he concludes, confirm the statement of the Secretary of State that the maximum grant for a new house will be £300?

Commander Galbraith: I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to Clause 3 (2). I ask him to read that carefully, because it says:
on the completion of the house of a lump sum not exceeding either—

(a) one half of the cost of the house; or
(b) two hundred and forty pounds in the case of a house containing three apartments, or three hundred pounds in the case of a house containing more than three apartments."
In other words, it cannot go above the limit of either the £240 or the £300 which appear in the Clause.

Mr. Ross: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman answer this simple question? Can it be more than £300?

Commander Galbraith: It cannot in relation to this Clause.

Mr. Ross: That is all I want to know.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

Orders of the Day — AGRICULTURE (CALF SUBSIDIES) [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make provision for the payment of subsidies in respect of calves, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of the amount of—

(a) the payment made in pursuance of schemes under the said Act for subsidies in respect of calves born on or after the first day of October, nineteen hundred and fifty-one, and
(b) other expenses of any Minister incurred in pursuance of the said Act.

Resolution agreed to.

Orders of the Day — AGRICULTURE (CALF SUBSIDIES) BILL

Considered in Committee.

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Clause 1.—(SCHEMES FOR CALF SUBSIDIES.)

7.45 p.m.

The Minister of Agriculture (Sir Thomas Dugdale): I beg to move, in page 1, line 18, to leave out from "for" to "and," and to insert:
the whole of the United Kingdom, for England, Wales and Scotland, for England. Wales and Northern Ireland, or for Scotland and Northern Ireland.
I do not know whether it would meet the convenience of the Committee if we discussed at the same time the next two Amendments—in page 1, line 18, to leave out "two or all three," and to insert "number.", and in line 18 to leave out "all three," and to insert "more."

Mr. A. J. Champion: We would have no objection to that.

The Chairman: That would be convenient, if it meets the wishes of the Committee.

Sir T. Dugdale: The purpose of this Amendment is to give effect to a promise which I made to Welsh Members when we were considering the Report stage of the Agriculture (Ploughing Grants) Bill. I said at that time that I would put down an Amendment to this Bill making a clear reference to Wales as a separate country. These words are designed to fulfil that pledge, and I hope the Committee will accept them in that spirit.

Mr. Goronwy Roberts: May I very briefly express the appreciation of the Welsh Members on the attitude which the Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary have taken on this matter? It is not a trivial matter, in our view, and we are very glad that the Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary have seen the way clear to meet us on this point. I should also like to express my gratitude to my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) and my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion), both of whom have been most helpful in this respect.
I did rather think that the Amendment put down in my name—in line 18, to leave out "two or all three," and to insert "number"—was a simpler method of reaching the same end, but it would be most ungracious of me to cavil at terminology at this stage. I thank the Minister, and I congratulate him, although I hope that in future Bills he will try to emulate the expert drafting which seems to prevail mostly on this side of the Committee.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Champion: I beg to move, in page 2, line 12, to leave out "three," and to insert "two."
We regard this Measure as something of a pump priming effort. It was intended to start off an increase in the number of calves reared for beef purposes. There is no doubt that this is something in the way of an ad hoc payment introduced for a specific purpose, but it appears to us to be in no way a substitute for a long-term livestock policy. The Minister has heard us use those words before. We use them again in this connection, because we regard this as a matter of some considerable importance.
As the right hon. Gentleman will no doubt be aware, the farmers and leaders of the farming industry have for some time been asking for a declaration of policy by the Government on the longterm livestock policy which they told us when they were in Opposition they would introduce when they became the Government of the day. Unfortunately for the country they have become the Government of the day, and unfortunately for themselves they have to do something about implementing these promises that were made to the leaders of the farming industry.
We think that if "two" is inserted here it will force the Minister to do something which he is obviously reluctant to do, and that is to make up his mind on this question of a long-term policy within a rather more limited time than he would set himself. We think that two years should be sufficient time during which he can make up his mind on these points, and then perhaps to go on and use subsidies of this sort—or production grants, as he prefers to call them—for purposes

in connection with a long-term policy in livestock production.
I shall not take up more time with this. I am sure the Minister will see that the point we are making has some substance, and is indeed essential. I hope that on reflection he will agree that two years from the start of this scheme is a sufficient time to enable him to work out a long-term policy and to bring it to this House.

Mr. R. T. Paget: I hope that the Minister will be able to meet us over this matter. I think that one of the troubles with subsidies, and particularly with agricultural subsidies, is that they are very much easier to put on than to take off. After all, the basis of our Agricultural Act is that the incentive to the farmer should be a guaranteed price, and that the instrument of the guaranteed price should be utilised and adjusted so as to get the pattern of production one requires. On a long-term, therefore, the thing which should get us meat is the price of beef. A subsidy, I feel, is really only justified where one wants to change the pattern of production quickly.
After all, the beef price is only payable four years ahead, when the animal has been conceived, brought up and fattened. These are times of expensive money, and let us at least recognise that no single factor inhibits agricultural production to so great an extent as expensive money. What we are doing with this subsidy is really providing a part-payment in advance on a beef price that is going on, and that can only happen while we are waiting for the pattern of production to change, with a greater emphasis on beef. When that pattern has changed the subsidy should come off and the incentive should go back to price.
We feel on this side of the Committee very anxious that subsidies should be kept as short in period as possible, and they should always be recognised as being a temporary measure, a mere adjusting measure within the general price structure.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: I hope that the Government will yield to us on this Amendment. I believe that if the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland comes to reply he will be able to endorse everything that has been said


from the Front Opposition Bench. When we were on the Government side of the House we listened to him very frequently, especially on questions dealing with Scottish agriculture, about the necessity of a long-term plan for increasing the number of cattle in the Highlands of Scotland. Indeed, some of his proposals were very advanced that they might have come from these quarters.
I remember, for example, when he developed a very imaginative scheme, on the lines described by Lord Lovat, by which we were to have some kind of corporation which was to have the task of rearing cattle in the Highlands of Scotland. It was, I think, one of the most far-reaching Socialist arguments we had heard from those benches for some time, and I always listen to the Joint Under-Secretary with a great deal of respect because he speaks authoritatively on these questions.
I remember that when he was sitting on this side I listened entranced to his argument which outlined the Highlands of Scotland being developed as a sort of range for cattle. There was to be a State corporation and something done on public utility lines. I hope that two years will be ample for those thoughts to develop. In fact, on the Second Reading of the Bill, he did, much to the consternation of some hon. Members behind him, suggest that the time had come for there to be a meat marketing board.
I hope, therefore, that the Joint Under-Secretary is not going to have all his ideas for agricultural development and a long-term policy damped by political expediency, and that these Socialists thoughts of his will be developed, so that in two years time he will come to the House and say, "These subsidies as a temporary expedient are very useful, but what we need is a long-term policy of public enterprise, which alone can help solve the problem of meat production in this country."

Captain Christopher Soames: I was most interested in the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). It really does not do for hon. Members opposite to talk against subsidies, even as they affect the agricultural industry. When the party opposite were in power, subsidies were used to a very great extent for

just such an expediency as this subsidy is being used now.

Mr. Paget: That is exactly what I said.

Captain Soames: They were as wrong then as they are now. Hon. Members opposite talk as if they were preaching a new gospel, but perhaps, if they had had more influence over their own Ministers, they might have brought this about in the days when the Socialist Party were in power. I must say that if the Minister says that it is necessary for him to keep on this subsidy for three years, I have not the detailed information available which would enable me to argue against him. But I feel that the least time he keeps any form of subsidy in the agricultural industry the better.
I am quite sure that it must be very easy for the Minister of Agriculture to slip in to this idea of subsidies. That is an easy way out. After all, agriculture, more than any other industry, must be planned on a long-term policy. It is not perhaps easy to see so far ahead as one would like. We can with this artificial medium of subsidies to a certain extent overcome the difficulty of long-term planning. There is the threat of this and that—not enough ploughing up, farmers not using enough fertilisers; therefore, let us put on a subsidy. I feel, however, that it does the agricultural industry a great deal of harm.
There are many hon. Members opposite who talk rather loosely about the problems that beset agriculture without perhaps knowing quite enough about them. It gives them a handle, and the opportunity for the townsman to say, "After all, you have taken a lot of subsidies off food and now you are giving it back to the farmers." I agree that there was a great necessity to increase the cattle population of this country, and that the quickest way to do it was through subsidies, but I do beseech hon. Members to realise that this should only be a temporary expedient. Do not let us fall into the idea that subsidies are to stay with agriculture for ever. I do not think that they are.
I do not support the Amendment, for if the Minister says he believes it is necessary for the scheme to last three years I do not know sufficient about it to go against him, but I ask him to


remember that the sooner he removes the subsidy the better it will be for the agricultural industry as a whole.

8.0 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Peart: The hon. and gallant Member for Bedford (Captain Soames) has now joined the party of the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin) who spoke very forcibly on the matter on Friday. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leominster on having such an enthusiastic recruit, and such an influential one. However, I am not sure where the hon. and gallant Member for Bedford stands. He said that subsidies were wrong in the past as they are now. I hope he will have the courage to fight his own party's policy on this, because the Bill is a subsidy Bill.

Captain Soames: I said that, owing to the rundown in the cattle population—this was happening long before the last General Election—some immediate step was necessary and I saw the Minister's point in providing a subsidy, but in principle I am against it. I see that it is necessary in this instance, but I hope it will not have to last too long. That was a perfectly plain argument, and I am sure that there are some holes which the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) can pick in this without going for ones which do not exist.

Mr. Peart: The hon. Gentleman is trying to qualify his main argument. If he will look at what he has said he will find that he condemned both past subsidy policies and the present subsidy policy. He went on to talk about the "slippery slope," saying that the Minister could easily slip into this policy and that he, therefore, condemned it. I believe he meant what he was saying. If one attacks a subsidy policy one ought to have the courage to condemn it.
This little Bill, which has the specific purpose of giving a subsidy for calves, is important in the immediate circumstances of our economic position. I want the Minister to tell us if the Government has any long-term plan for cattle production. We have heard rumours that there is no such long-term plan and that the present Government is merely acting on expediency in continuing the progressive lines introduced by the Labour Government. Has the Minister anything different?
I have also heard that our cattle population may decline in the next two years. I hope the Minister will give us some assurances on the matter—it is important—and that he will specifically answer the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion). I agree with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) that we must have a long-term policy—we ought to have an examination of the incidence of subsidies for specific purposes—but, immediately, we believe that this Measure should be supported. Therefore, we seek to improve it by amending it, and we hope that the Minister will tell us whether the promises made by the Conservative Party at the General Election were only window-dressing or whether the Government really means business in agriculture.

Mr. Robert Crouch: I want, first, to correct hon. Members opposite who are continually stating that this is a subsidy for the agricultural industry. They know full well that this is part of the agreement made at the last February Price Review; it was agreed that part of what was given to the farmer should be paid in this way in order to encourage the rearing of more calves. This is not a subsidy.

Mr. Peart: The hon. Member cannot have read the Bill, for its title is the Agriculture (Calf Subsidies) Bill.

Mr. Crouch: That may be the title of the Bill and we may term this a subsidy, but we know full well that it is part of last February's Price Review. As a result of the introduction of a subsidy in 1947 there was a very great increase in the number of calves reared in this country. Immediately the Labour Government announced that it would discontinue the subsidy there was a decline in the number of calves raised.
We all know that our beef production has been precarious for several years. I welcome this means of encouraging the rearing of more calves so that more meat will be available in the future. Anyone who knows even a very little about the agricultural industry knows that to suggest that a Measure of this kind should be for a shorter period than three years is not to regard the industry in the proper


perspective. It takes three years from the time of rearing until steer calves are fit for slaughter.
In view of the world situation today, it is wise for us to do all we can to encourage the rearing of more calves so that we can produce more meat here instead of relying on importations from distant parts of the world. Realising as a farmer how essential it is for us to rear more calves in order to produce more beef, I oppose the Amendment.

Mr. Harold Davies: Hon. Members on both sides of the Committee appreciate the magnificent effort made by the agricultural industry in the last 10 years, when it has really been mining the ground rather than tilling it, in producing Britain's food. However, looking at the Amendment from a constructive point of view, whereas we do not say that there may not be a case for a subsidy at this transitional period, there is a feeling, particularly among those of us with large agricultural areas in our constituencies, as I have in Leek, that the time has come for the whole House to make a serious and constructive approach to the problem of our food production.
I want the Minister to tell us if we have ever looked scientifically at the kind of meat this country can afford to eat. Can Britain produce beef in the next period of its history? Have we finished, historically, as a great beef-eating country?

Captain Soames: No.

Mr. Davies: It is easy for people to be dogmatic about this, but I am asking the question seriously, and there is no need for a dogmatic answer. Can we afford to go forward with our 19th century conception of being a beef-eating country? The other day the Ministry of Agriculture produced an interesting brochure on British farming which described the terrific battle which is silently going on at present between the trowel and the plough because housing is spreading out into the agricultural areas.
In this matter we ought to look at the British Isles as a whole. I was rather surprised that after a little effort at a very peaceful conference at Morecambe I was able to get the Labour Party to agree that we should look constructively even at the development of Southern Ireland. Might not the development of beef and

other cattle-produce in Southern Ireland be a constructive approach if we are thinking of agriculture as the fourth arm of defence? I deprecate this policy of continually trying to urge production by subsidies. This is only patching, and there is a terrific need in Britain for all sides of the Committee to realise the urgency of the position in regard to food production.
We should like the Government to come forward with a constructive policy for meat eating and beef production and, maybe, there is an opportunity for further development of sheep farming when we compare the millions in the population of sheep in the 19th century with the numbers in the 20th century. Would not encouragement in that way give us greater dividends than this patching, which is much to the dissatisfaction of farmers, as I found in an open-air meeting with them last week?

Mr. Crouch: The hon. Member complains of the price paid to the farmer for production of meat and wonders if we are going in the right direction in the production of beef. Is he aware that in may this year the Ministry of Food paid £120 a ton for British beef, whereas in Chicago—which is recognised as the greatest meat market in the world—the price of beef was no less than £410 a ton?

Mr. Davies: I agree, but that is no answer to the problem.

Sir T. Dugdale: I do not think I would remain in order if I followed too closely the arguments of the hon. Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) as to whether we are a beef-eating nation or not. We all agree, on all sides of the Committee, that we could certainly do with a bit more beef if we could produce it in a short time. The purpose of the Amendment is to limit the duration of the scheme to two years. I accept at once that this is a difficult question. I should like the Committee to know that I have given very careful thought to this problem as to whether the first scheme introduced under this Bill should be for two or three years.
The first scheme is part of the Review settlement of last year. If we had not done it in this particular way by making arrangements for this calf subsidy it


would have gone on to the end price of beef. That is perfectly clear. The first scheme, which was part of the Review settlement, costs about one penny a pound, and that would have gone on to the end price if it were not done by subsidy. That brings me to the arguments of the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion), the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bedford (Captain Soames). All the points they raise I will bear very carefully in mind for the future.
I want to remind the Committee that by injecting this calf subsidy at a very early stage in the production cycle it becomes of enormous benefit to the small farmer and the small man, who has been in particular difficulties due to continually rising costs which the industry has to bear at present. I am not going to argue about that tonight, but if we could get those costs stabilised, we could consider the whole position. At the moment we must remember that beef production is a long-term business. It is true that we are trying to think far ahead. I try to think as far ahead as I can and then to answer at this Box. Because I think it is a long-term business I think we shall get the best results by making the scheme a three year scheme.
I may have something to say on another Amendment, for which I have great sympathy, when we talk about varying the scheme, but I think it right to make it a three year scheme.
8.15 p.m.
We all want to get more meat from home production. Therefore, I have no hesitation in referring to the first calf subsidy scheme introduced by the previous Government in 1947. In 1947 the number of steers and heifer calves was 1,746,000. Then we got the scheme in August of that year and it was for two years. We had a big jump in the first year, when the scheme came into force, and there was an increase by September, 1948, of 366,000 calves. In the following year we had a further increase, bringing the total increase to 520,000. The farming community did not know what the position would be after that, and there was a change in the incidence as between

heifer and steer calves so that, between December, 1949—which was the peak reached as the result of the first scheme—to March, 1952, there was a decrease of calves of 364,000.
That is conclusive evidence that if we are to do this at all—and I think all will accept that we are to do it—the right time for the first scheme is three years in order to give everyone plenty of time, to know what is intended and so that they will know that the scheme will last. By so doing I think we shall get the maximum increase in calves and at the same time help small producers in different parts of the country. For these reasons, I hope that hon. Members opposite will agree not to press the Amendment.

Mr. Paget: There is a lot in that argument, but surely the present intention involves more like a four years than a three years scheme. The scheme which we are asking the Government to alter is for a period which begins on a date before the commencement of this Act. Does not this begin in October, 1951?

Sir T. Dugdale: It does; but that is purely a question of Parliamentary time. We have not been able to fit in this legislation until now and we thought it right and proper that the steers subsidy should run on from the date where it left off, in 1951. It would be extremely difficult to operate if there were a gap between the ending of the last scheme and the beginning of the new scheme, provided we were prepared to go on with a scheme. It would be equally difficult to make a differentiation between the steer and heifer subsidy.

Mr. Paget: I am in some difficulty in understanding why the right hon. Gentleman is refusing this Amendment. This Amendment would give the right hon. Gentleman the three years subsidy, which is exactly what he asks.

Sir T. Dugdale: I say this will give the three years plus. I shall be very helpful, I hope, in dealing with Amendments which will come later.

Mr. Champion: As the three years plus one makes four years and we want three years, we think the Minister has not met us. But, having regard to the fact that he has expressed his awareness of the danger of letting these schemes run on without taking such other methods as


appear to him to be justifiable for a longterm livestock policy, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: I beg to move in page 2, line 22, to leave out "persons by whom and."
I think it would be appropriate, if you approve, Sir Charles, to take together this and the next Amendment, in page 2, line 23, after "out," insert "by officers of the Minister."
The purposes of these two Amendments, as will readily be seen, is to provide that the scheme will make provision for the manner in which the certification of calves is to be carried out by officers of the Ministry. It will be clear to all members of the Committee what we have in mind. The marking of calves under the previous scheme was administered in England and Wales very largely by people employed part-time by the Ministry of Agriculture on a per capita basis. We in Scotland employed in our scheme persons on a full-time salaried basis.
I well remember that in the course of one of our debates in this House a few years ago hon. Members wondered why there should be such a considerable discrepancy between the cost of this service in Scotland and that in England and Wales. It was rather surprising that it cost very much less to do this job in Scotland, where we had full-time officers, than it cost in England and Wales, where it was done by part-time people on a per capita basis. I believe the Minister said during the Second Reading discussion that it was his view that it would be advantageous in future in this matter to employ full-time officers throughout the country.
We have put down these two Amendments with a view to obtaining a further statement from the Minister on the matter; and we hope that he will be able to accept the Amendment because it will lay upon him and any other Minister, including the Secretary of State for Scotland, who makes a scheme under this Act, the duty to provide, in the preparation of the scheme, that the marking will be done by full-time officers of the Ministry.
I repeat that our experience up to date is that the full-time officers cost less—are more economic—than the part-time officers. Further, it goes without saying

that the Ministry has always more control and more jurisdiction over the work of a full-time officer than it has over someone who is employed part-time on a per capita basis. I think it is very likely that the marking will be more effectively, efficiently and better done by full-time than by part-time officers.

Sir T. Dugdale: It might be convenient if I intervened at this point to reply to the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser), because the object of the Amendment is entirely what we propose to do. There are reasons, however, why I hope that hon. Gentlemen will not press their Amendment.
It is our intention to appoint full-time certifying officers in England and Wales similar to those already employed in previous schemes of certification both in Scotland and Northern Ireland. They will replace, in England and Wales, the former fee-paid officers. Arrangements have already been made, in anticipation of the approval of this Bill by the House, for those officers to be selected.
To that extent, therefore, the Amendment only provides for what is intended. If the Committee will bear with me for a few moments, however, I should like to try to convince them that to put words of this kind in the Bill would be restrictive. I will give one example.
Certification of calves in Northern Ireland is carried out by officers of the Ministry of Agriculture, Belfast. Those officers are not, strictly speaking, officers of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. Again, in Scotland or indeed in England and Wales, it might well be that in some isolated districts it might be necessary, due to sickness or some other cause, to ask some temporary officers, well qualified and respected, to undertake the work of one of the full-time officers.
Accordingly, we should not like these words to be included in the Bill, as they might be difficult to operate, and I hope that they will not be pressed. Our intention, however, is as was explained in the speech of the hon. Member for Hamilton.

Mr. Champion: I am bound to say that the Minister has made a very strong point so far as Northern Ireland is concerned. I wonder whether it is his intention to include such words as we are suggesting in schemes in respect of which he could


get over that difficulty. It is part of our difficulty in this connection that even if the Minister puts into a scheme what we are proposing, we have either to reject the scheme in toto or accept it in toto. We cannot amend a scheme at the stage when it is before the House.
We are certainly glad to learn that the Minister agrees with the main purpose of the Amendment, because this is surely a job which should in the circumstances be done by a full-time officer. The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland made this point very well in his Second Reading speech.
I do not want to press this Amendment too strongly, but we should like to know whether the Minister is going to include this intention in schemes, in which case he could exclude Northern Ireland from its operation, or whether he feels that, having given his assurance to the Committee, he has sufficiently covered the point and set our doubts at rest. I should like to know what the Minister thinks of that.

Mr. Anthony Hurd: Before the Minister replies, I should like to say a few words. He will have in mind the fact that most of us on these benches must look askance at any proposal to increase the permanent staff of any Government Department, even the Ministry of Agriculture. We should like to know from the Minister what annual saving he anticipates will be made by employing a few permanent civil servants to do this job rather than by employing farmers or others on a part-time basis.
The Minister will know that the job of certifying calves for the subsidy has been done satisfactorily, from the farmers' point of view at all events; I do not think there have been many cases of dispute. We should like to be assured that an arrangement which works well in England and Wales is not being discarded and the number of permanent civil servants being increased without very good reason, that reason being a saving of money to the Exchequer.

Captain Soames: The Minister might clarify one point on this matter. Under the old scheme, when calves were examined by part-time officers of the Department on a per capita basis, the farmer always had the right of appeal to

an officer of the Ministry. The Minister has now said that this work is to be done by officers of the Ministry. Indeed I understand that many of them are now taking a course in order to learn what a beef-type calf should look like. Will the farmer who is not satisfied with the decision of the full-time officer have any right of appeal, as he used to have when the work was done by part-time officers?

8.30 p.m.

Sir T. Dugdale: So far as the cost is concerned, we reckon that whereas under the former scheme it cost 4s. a calf, under this new arrangement, if we can take Scotland as an example, it will cost approximately 2s. a calf. There will not be an appeal, but there is now instruction going on so that the officers we shall use will know exactly what is required of them. It is being done in agreement with the farmers' organisations, who are perfectly satisfied about what we propose to do. But I will watch the point raised by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bedford (Captain Soames).

Mr. T. Fraser: The Minister has been most reasonable, for he has assured us that he intends to appoint full-time officers. Many times in the last 10 years hon. Members who have moved Amendments which were resisted for similar reasons have said, "We know we can trust the Minister, but what about his successors?" I am absolutely convinced that the saving to be effected by the appointment of full-time officers will be so obvious to those responsible for the administration of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Scottish Office that there will be no fear of any subsequent Minister reverting to part-time appointments on a per capita basis. In all the circumstances, therefore, I beg to, ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Paget: I beg to move, in page 2, line 29, at the end, to insert:
(d) for the marking of calves imported or brought into the United Kingdom.
I think it might be convenient if this Amendment were taken with the proposed Amendment to it, namely, in line 1 at the end, add:
Provided always that no subsidy shall be payable upon such imported calves.

The Chairman: I was not proposing to select that Amendment to the Amend-


ment, because an Amendment to a proposed Amendment seems to be rather absurd when the same names appear on both.

Mr. Paget: With respect, Sir Charles, I do not think it really is so, because what we are doing here—and these two Amendments go with a later Amendment to leave out Clause 2—is to provide an alternative to Clause 2. What we are suggesting is that the Committee may take the alternative to Clause 2, which is the Amendment I am now moving; or they may take the Amendment which I am now moving with the addendum, which is the Amendment to the Amendment. The Committee may take either as an alternative to Clause 2.

The Chairman: I am afraid that is too complicated for me. When I see four names appearing in support of an Amendment and then three of them in support of an Amendment to that Amendment, it does not appear to me that the second Amendment should be selected.

Mr. Archer Baldwin: On a point of Order. May we know which Amendment is being moved?

The Chairman: The hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) is moving it now.

Sir T. Dugdale: Before the hon. and learned Gentleman moves his Amendment, may I suggest that we take the proposed Amendment to leave out Clause 2? That would cover the whole thing.

Mr. Paget: I was going to suggest that we should take that Amendment.

The Chairman: That is not really an Amendment at all, because by the rules I have to put the Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill." We might discuss the two Amendments together, and then, when we come to Clause 2, I might put the Question forthwith. That might satisfy the wishes of everyone.

Mr. Paget: If I may move my Amendment now, perhaps something may turn up before we get to Clause 2.
The point of my Amendment is that subsection (4) of Clause 1 sets out all that may be put in the schemes. It provides for the
person to whom payments may be made …

It provides for
securing that no payment shall be made …
except under certain conditions, and
the persons by whom and manner in which certification of calves
shall take place; and
for such incidental and supplementary matters.…
That provides what may be put into the scheme.
Then we proceed, by Clause 2 of this Bill, to provide:
With a view to ensuring that payments under any scheme are properly made, the appropriate Minister may by order provide (subject to such exemptions, if any, as may be specified in the order) for the marking of calves imported or brought into the United Kingdom.
Why have a separate Clause for that? It would seem so much simpler to put the whole thing in the scheme. After all, the provisions as to certification of calves are presumably provisions to secure that calves which are not certified shall not profit under the scheme. When we are dealing with imported calves, which I understand means, broadly speaking, Irish calves—indeed I think exclusively Irish calves—it seems to me that every imported calf ought to be marked if and when and while we are having a subsidy scheme. Why not provide in the scheme for their marking and thereby, by a matter of some 10 words, save some 10 lines of a Bill and a substantial complication?
Clause 1 provides for the alteration and variations of schemes while they are running, so that there would be no greater difficulty in varying the scheme if it were necessary to make some alteration about marking imported calves than there would be by bringing in a new Order. It would seem to be much simpler from the point of view of everyone that everything about the scheme should be found in the scheme itself, instead of having the labour of first searching the scheme and then the Order.
Regarding the substance of the matter, it does seem to us extremely important that all calves which are imported ought to be marked, and that is why in the Amendment we have not included the words which appear in Clause 2:
subject to such exemptions, if any, as may be specified.…


We feel that there ought not to be any exceptions, but that all imported calves ought to be marked.
As to the interrogative question regarding that, is it, or is it not, proposed to pay a subsidy on imported calves? There may be a case for it. It may be desirable to encourage the importation of calves and to say to anybody, "If you want to import a calf, then we shall contribute something to its cost," but we should like to know whether it is or is not contemplated paying a subsidy on imported calves.
If it is intended to pay such a subsidy, what is the justification for it, and just how does a subsidy on imported calves stand in regard to what we arranged in the Price Review? So far as I could make out, there was nothing in the Price Review which contemplated a subsidy on imported animals. Is that so or not, and what is the intention of the Minister with regard to it?

Mr. Champion: I want to add one question to those of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). As I understand it, Clause 2 will require a separate Order from that which will be made under Clause 1 of the Bill. It is possible that the separate Order might die at a different time from that set out in the main scheme under Clause 1, in which case we should be running into some difficulty, and it would appear to me to be the better way of dealing with this matter to include the words proposed by my hon. and learned Friend in the main scheme in Clause 1.
I hope that the Minister will look at this matter, both in the light of the points made by my hon. and learned Friend and of the point, which I believe has some substance, of this unnecessary, as it appears to me, making of a separate scheme which might have a different terminating date, which would cause some difficulties as a result.

Sir T. Dugdale: I hope I shall be able to explain the position to the Committee, but this is a technical difficulty. I can say at once that there is no intention to pay a subsidy on imported calves. In fact, we could not do it under the Bill, because, as the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) will see if he looks at Clause 1 (1, a), it is clear

that the subsidy relates to calves born in the United Kingdom within the period specified in the scheme. We could not do it under this Bill, but in any case there is no intention whatever of doing it.
Therefore, quite rightly, the hon. and learned Member for Northampton and the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion) asked why we do not put this in the scheme, instead of having a special procedure. The reason is that at the present moment the Minister of Food undertakes the marking of imported calves under the Defence Regulations, and, as long as this arrangement continues, there is no need for the Agriculture Ministers to do so; otherwise, they would be doing the work twice.
If at any time in the future the Minister of Food ceases to mark imported calves, it would then become necessary for the Agriculture Ministers to make Orders promptly to ensure that imported animals were marked, and they could not, in my view, afford a delay which might possibly arise if they had to vary a scheme, because that is the only way they could do it. Variation would rightly require an affirmative Resolution of both Houses of Parliament. Instead of that, the Ministers will be able to make an Order, subject only to a negative Resolution, which can be made at any time, even if the House is not in Session at a particular time when it is necessary to make an Order quickly.
I hope that, with that explanation of the position, and if I repeat quite definitely that it is not and never was our intention to pay a subsidy on imported calves from public funds, the Amendment may be withdrawn.

Mr. Paget: As that is a very good reason, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn

8.45 p.m.

Sir T. Dugdale: I beg to move, in page 2, line 33, to leave out subsection (5).
I was wondering, Sir Charles, whether it would be for the convenience of the Committee if we discussed the new Clause standing in my name together with this Amendment, because they hang together.

The Chairman: If the Committee are agreeable to that course. I have no objection.

Sir T. Dugdale: Subsection (5), which this Amendment proposes to leave out, would be replaced by the new Clause dealing with
Provisions as to slaughter of calves.
The purpose of the Clause is to provide for a scheme or order to specify the age at which an animal ceases to be a calf for the purpose of any schemes under this Bill. It includes the provision formerly in subsection (5) which I am now moving to leave out.
It is customary to describe an animal as a calf in ordinary parlance up to the age of 10 to 12 months, and thereafter for the animal to be known as a yearling. But I am sure the Committee will agree it is essential that the Bill should also apply to animals over 12 months old and that for the purpose of the Bill such animals should be known as calves.
The reason for that is, first, because it is proposed that the subsidy shall be paid on animals which at the time of certification in accordance with a scheme have not got their first permanent incisor tooth. This tooth, as hon. Members may know, can appear at any age between 15 months and two years. Therefore, it is necessary for the purposes of the scheme to be able to describe as calves animals more than 10 to 12 months old.
The second reason is that a subsidy is only to be paid on calves born in the United Kingdom, and power is therefore taken under Clause 2 (1) to make an order for the marking of imported calves so that they may be distinguished from home-produced calves. For this purpose, the age at which the animal ceases to be a calf must never be less than the age at which a home-produced calf ceases to be one for the purposes of the operation of this Bill as, otherwise the Committee will appreciate, an importer might argue that his animal is too old to be a calf in the customary meaning of the word, and, therefore, should not be marked.
At present Clause 1 (5) provides that the limits of age within which a calf falls under this scheme
may … be defined … by reference to the growth of teeth.
Subsection (2) of the proposed new Clause gives additional power to the Minister. It sets out not only the limit

of age at which the calf falls within the scheme, but also the age at which an animal ceases to be a calf. This is rather a technical point, but I hope I have made it clear to the Committee.

Mr. Champion: I think the Committee can understand what the Minister has put to us, although it is a complicated point. I shall be glad to know under what Clause, or whether it is under this Clause, the Minister is going to do something about the provision for the payment of the subsidy on calves reared in hill conditions in Scotland, and, perhaps, in certain parts of Wales and England, where the farmer is forced to sell for lack of winter fodder.
This was a point that was well made by the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. I wonder whether it is under this subsection that the Minister is going to do something about that. If not, under what subsection will he be doing it? I must admit that I cannot find anything in Clause 1 (1), but probably there is something there which will permit the Minister to do this and to define the areas where and the circumstances in which such a subsidy will be paid, not at the top end of the age range of which he was speaking but at the lower end of about six months.

Sir T. Dugdale: No, it does not come under this Clause. That will come in a separate scheme for Scotland.

Mr. Champion: I think that when we were dealing with this on Second Reading we were told by the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland that there were probably conditions in Wales and elsewhere where it was a recognised thing for these calves to be coming on the market rather early, because of the system of spring calving and the recognised sale of them in the autumn period before they began to make a drain on the farmer's winter resources. I certainly understood from the reply given then that this point would be carefully looked at between this stage and the Committee stage and that something would be done. It is something of a disappointment to me to learn that it will now only relate to Scotland.

Sir T. Dugdale: indicated dissent.

Mr. Champion: The Minister now shakes his head, but I understood him to say definitely that it would be only in the Scottish scheme.

Sir T. Dugdale: I am sorry if I have misinterpreted things to the Committee. Provision is not made in this Clause, nor in the new Clause. The point which the hon. Member has just made is still in our minds, but provision can be made in the schemes, because special circumstances will be described in all schemes. Problems of the kind that exist in the Highlands of Scotland exist in Wales and in the Northern part of the country and there will be clauses in the schemes to cover that point.

Mr. Paget: I hope that the Minister will have another look at the new Clause and see whether he really wants it. I have had the greatest difficulty in seeing why he wants either Clause 5 (5) or the new Clause. In Clause 1 (4, b) he is given a complete discretion. The words of that Clause are entirely general and I should have thought that that would have entitled him to define calves exactly as he thinks and that the new Clause, instead of widening his discretion, by attempting to define it would have limited it in fact. I should have thought that the Minister would have been better off without either Clause 5 (5) or the new Clause, simply relying on the generality of Clause 1 (4, b) which I think entitles him to do anything.

Mr. Clifford Kenyon: There is some danger here in placing the age of a calf too high. Now that it has been given we want the subsidy to go to the breeder and the rearer, and in hill farms many rearers have to sell their calves at about nine months old. If we provide the subsidy at the time when an animal begins to cut its teeth, the animal definitely will not be in the calf class. Then, as they do today, we shall have the dealers buying these calves up just before they reach the age of certification and carrying them on until they can obtain a subsidy when they are yearlings.
When they are yearlings and are run on the hills they then qualify for the further subsidy—the hill subsidy; they qualify for the hill subsidy when they are 12 months old. I see the danger that the dealers may get hold of the yearlings, run them on the hills and then get the hill subsidy. In many cases, if the age is put too high, they will get both the calf subsidy and the hill subsidy. I feel that the limit should be between nine and 12 months. To go right on to the time when

the calf is cutting its first permanent teeth is altogether too long. The limit should be not more than 12 months, in my opinion. I feel that we are getting completely out of farming practice.

Mr. Crouch: Would the Minister please assist the Committee? As I understand it, the new Clause is introduced purely for the purpose of bridging the gap which exists as the previous scheme was allowed to lapse on 1st October last year. Do I understand that when that gap has been bridged it will not be necessary to continue calling these animals calves when they are beyond the yearling stage—or does the Minister wish to behave towards the calves as many of us do towards the female members of society and suggest that they are much younger than they are? I believe it is the Minister's intention in the years ahead to tell the truth about the age of calves, but I should be glad to hear his reply.

Sir T. Dugdale: I should like to answer first the point put by the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). I think that legally it could be argued that the Bill would be all right without the new Clause, but I am advised that, in fact, Clause 4 (a) and (b) refers to payments, whereas Clause 5 as it will be—the new Clause—defines calves. I am told that on balance it is considered that it is much better and safer if we have both Clauses in the Bill, although legally and technically the hon. and learned Member would be right in what he said.
The hon. Member for Dorset, North (Mr. Crouch) referred to the age of calves. I quite appreciate his point and will bear it in mind, but if we were to confine the age to between nine and 12 months it would be too tight. We must have a bit of latitude there for the best operation of the scheme.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Paget: I beg to move in page 2, line 40, to leave out from "not," to "be," in line 41.
I think it might be convenient, Mr. Hopkin Morris, if this Amendment were taken with the next one in line 42, leave out "by more than three years."

The Deputy-Chairman (Mr. Hopkin Morris): Yes, I agree, if that course meets the wishes of the Committee.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. Paget: These two Amendments deal with the power to extend the scheme by variations. We feel that there should be no question of extension by variation but that, if another scheme is wanted—and I rather hope that it will not be—the Minister should come to the House with a new scheme. As I am rather hopeful of this Amendment, in view of what the Minister has said, I would say that some of us—including, I think, the hon. and gallant Member for Bedford (Captain. Soames)—are anxious that the calf subsidy scheme should not go on indefinitely.
The overwhelming majority of calves are not fattened by the man who breeds them. They are sold as stores. If the cost is in the final handling, that final price is reflected in an enhanced price at the stall, but one gets judgment applied instead of a blind figure. The farming community exercises a selection as to how the money will be paid for calves—the money being provided in price instead of as a direct subsidy. In the long run I think that that will always be preferable to a simple per-unit payment of one price or one addition for each calf. That is why we hope that it will be eventually possible to do it through the final price rather than through a subsidy; but for the moment I confine myself to saying that if there is to be another scheme we should rather see a new scheme than a mere prolongation by alteration of the old scheme.

Sir T. Dugdale: It would not be appropriate for me to argue for a very long time as to the merits of an end price or a substitute price at any early stage of the productive cycle, but there is force in this Amendment. Although the hon. and learned Member will probably not expect me to accept it as it is, I hope that he will allow me to look at its actual wording and perhaps put down an Amendment to carry out its intention on the Report stage.
If, after the scheme has been going for three years, it is intended to have a scheme for another period of three years, it is right, as the hon. and learned Member says, that the Government should

come to the House with a scheme, even if it is the same one. To suggest that one scheme should carry on and be amended for another period of three years after the original three years and the extra time to which the hon. and learned Member referred in an earlier Amendment is, I agree, carrying it on for rather a long time. I am perfectly prepared to look at this question and put down an Amendment in words which will meet the requirements of the hon. and learned Member.

Major H. Legge-Bourke: I am very glad the Minister has said what he has to the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). I certainly think that on the face of it it is unnecessary to make provision so far ahead.
In addition to what he has said he is going to consider, I will ask him to think of one other thing. Fairly recently he stated that he is hoping that over the next four years there will be an increase of up to 400,000 a year in the number of calves reared. At the same time, the Minister might consider whether it would not be better to make the period of the Bill four years instead of taking two bites of three years. Perhaps when he is considering the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Northampton, he will also consider this suggestion.

Mr. Champion: I do not want the Committee to imagine that all hon. Members on this side of the Committee are agreed on the answer to the question, at what point are we going to pay? I disagree with the point of view of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), and I think there are a number of occasions upon which it is a good thing to inject the subsidy of a production grant at an earlier point. My hon. and learned Friend and I do not propose to carry this disagreement to the point where we split. We are agreed on the end product which we want to achieve, and that is an increase in our production of beef.

Mr. Paget: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."

Mr. Champion: Before we part from this Clause, there are one or two points which I should like to put to the Minister, and I shall not take long in doing so. The first concerns the point about payment for marking, which was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown). It seemed to me that my right hon. Friend raised on Second Reading what was an important question as to the method which will be adopted for the payment for certifying and marking.
My right hon. Friend suggested that the old system was a bad one and asked whether the Minister would pay for the certifying on a per capita basis, or whether he would pay on the basis of a visit to the farm. We wondered whether this point would be dealt with in the scheme and whether the Minister had made up his mind about it. It is true that the scheme which was previously operated was rather expensive, and we have been promised that the new scheme will be very much less expensive. We wonder, therefore, whether the payment will be made as was suggested in my right hon. Friend's question.
The second question I want to ask concerns the replacement of the milk cheque incentive. On Second Reading this question was asked by a number of hon. Members, who placed some weight upon it. They wondered whether the Minister would look at the point between Second Reading and the Committee stage, but we see nothing about it in the scheme and we wonder whether it is possible to do something about it before the next stage of the Bill. Frankly, I cannot think of a way, but I would not put it past the Minister's officers to find some way of doing something which would cause people who, I think wrongly in the circumstances, but nevertheless understandably, are producing milk when they would be much better employed in producing calves for beef production.
The third point concerns the slaughter of immature animals. How does the Minister intend to make provision in the scheme for the reduction of the price for animals upon which a subsidy has been paid and which come in for grading as immature animals? We were told on Second Reading that it is not proposed to pay twice; or, rather, that the Minister proposes to get the subsidy payment deducted when the animal comes in for

grading. How does he propose to do that? Is it to be done purely by administrative arrangement between him and the Ministry of Food, or does he intend to do it in the schemes which he will present to the House?
I think this is a matter of some little importance. We ought to do all we can to prevent these immature animals from coming into the market for grading, and it might be well if something were included in the scheme which would permit animals brought in for grading in this way to be used for the purpose for which the subsidy was originally paid—that is, fattened off, instead of being brought in for grading and slaughter at an immature stage. It is right that this money should not be paid for animals which are not being carried on to a reasonable size. I am wondering how the Minister is going to deal with that—whether by administrative arrangement between himself and the Minister of Food, or by inclusion in a scheme which he will make under this Clause.
There is a last point in this connection on which I should like some information. I think anyone who has any experience at all of farming will know of calves being so badly fed that they never will make decent beef animals. Are these automatically to receive subsidy, or is there to be some way of excluding them? We have all seen them—those calves that ought to have had very much more milk than they have received; that have not a good frame as a basis on which to build fat. Are these to get the £5, or is there to be a way in which they can be excluded from the subsidy? I know this is a difficult matter, but I do think we ought to have some answer on these points which I think are—and some hon. Members on Second Reading then thought were—points of considerable substance.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture (Mr. G. R. H. Nugent): This Clause seems to have found general favour, although there have been a few suggestions and comments in connection with it. The four points which the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion) has raised, I think, do not conflict with the general purpose of the Clause.
With regard to his first point on the payment for marking, marking is to be


done by full-time officers, as my right hon. Friend has already said, in England and Wales, and in Scotland and in Northern Ireland as before, and the effect of that will be, as my right hon. Friend has said, to make a very considerable saving indeed.
The figures, I think, are interesting. Under the last scheme the cost in England and Wales varied from £207,000 in 1948 to £296,000 in 1949; but under this scheme, with full-time certifying officers instead of part-time certifying officers we expect that the cost in England and Wales will be approximately £100,000 per annum, possibly £110,000; so that at most it will be rather under half of what it was before.
The certifying officers will not be paid per capita or by visit to the farm. They will be full-time employed, making a round of visits to the farms, visiting them as many times in the year as necessary to certify the calves concerned.
As to the second point raised by the hon. Member, with regard to the necessity for having some incentive, instead of a monthly milk cheque, which might encourage the farmers in suitable rearing areas to turn over to beef instead of milk, my right hon. Friend does not propose at present to go further than the Bill. With the higher end price for beef which was introduced at the last Price Review, combined with the effect of this specific calf subsidy, we believe that we shall have done something quite significant to encourage those who are best placed to go in for calf rearing to do so. As with a great many other things one must just try it to see what response we shall get to it, and whether it will be sufficient. We believe that it will be quite a substantial additional incentive to encourage those best placed for calf rearing to turn over to it.
9.15 p.m.
Experience of the previous calf subsidy encourages me to think that the re-introduction will have a considerable effect. The first scheme was extremely successful for the first two years. It ran into difficulties in the next two years, getting a reducing response for a number of reasons which, to my mind, were not directly connected with the calf subsidy itself. I believe that the re-introduction of the calf subsidy on the present basis, directed as far as possible to beef calves,

both steers and heifers, will give the necessary incentive to restart the expansion that we so badly need.
With regard to the slaughter of immature calves, the main safeguard, of course is the Ministry of Food graders in the markets rejecting beasts that are immature when they are offered for slaughter. The present arrangement is that the graders should reject animals which in their opinion are not ready for slaughter, and if they are below a weight of 6 cwt. Whether that is the final figure or not, it is the present figure, and there would be difficulties in raising it.
At the same time, the £5 subsidy would be deducted from an animal which had been marked and which was offered for slaughter, in the opinion of the graders, in a condition not fit for slaughter. That is to say, if the farmer concerned offered it for slaughter and the graders gave it as their view that it was immature, then, if the farmer still wished it to go to slaughter he would lose £5. The whole object of both those operations is to encourage the farmer who offers an immature animal to turn it into the store market.
My right hon. Friend has given careful consideration to the alternative method suggested by the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) on Second Reading, that it should be obligatory for them to be turned into the store market. We feel that that would be too rigid, because there are times when keep is very short, as happened in the West country two or three years ago, and unless farmers are able to offer their beasts for slaughter, even if not quite mature, their prospects of getting a reasonable price have disappeared because the store market has collapsed. We therefore feel it would not be wise to make it obligatory for the immature animal to be sent into the store market, but it is sufficient that the grader should have, so to speak, two shots in their locker, the combined effect of the two being to persuade the farmer to send the immature animal into the store market.
The fourth point was the question of calves which have been badly started, and which have little or no prospect of ever making good beef. Under the first scheme there were, it is true, a certain number of calves certified and given a subsidy which perhaps were not entirely


worthy of it. Well, it was a new scheme and I suppose there was bound to be a little error here and there.
On the whole, I think it will be agreed that the part-time certifying officers, who were starting out on quite a difficult job, made a very good shot at it, and we should all be very grateful to them. I believe that with the full-time certifying officers that we shall have now we shall get far greater uniformity in the certifying of calves. These men will become progressively more and more expert as they are continually grading calves all the time, and I think the Committee can be assured that the likelihood of unsuitable calves being granted a subsidy will be a great deal less in the future under this scheme than it was in the past.

Mr. Champion: Will the certifying authority have power to reject a calf?

Mr. Nugent: Yes, certainly. The certifying officer's decision will normally be final both on steer calves and on heifer calves. The test of heifer calves will naturally be a good deal closer in the dual-purpose breeds than in the case of steer calves, but naturally he has the power to reject any calf if he considers that it is not of a kind which will make good beef.
I think that covers the points raised, and I trust that the Committee will now be prepared to accept the Clause.

Question put, and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2.—(PROVISIONS AS TO IMPORTED CALVES.)

Mr. Paget: I beg to move, in page 3, line 10, to leave out "properly."

The Deputy-Chairman: I think that it might be for the convenience of the Committee if we took together this Amendment and the three following Amendments—in page 3, line 10, after "made," insert:
only in respect of calves bred in the United Kingdom";
in line 10, leave out "may," and insert "shall"; and in line 11, leave out from "provide," to "for," in line 12.

Mr. Paget: The first two Amendments are clearly linked together. I feel that

the first and second Amendments are Amendments which the Minister, in view of what he has said, will have no difficulty in accepting. These two Amendments substitute for the word "properly"—
With a view to ensuring that payments under any scheme are properly made"—
the words, "are made only in respect of calves bred in the United Kingdom." The Minister has told us that that is precisely the intention, and I feel that there can be very little difficulty in or objection to expressing that intention in the Bill.
The third Amendment is to substitute "shall" for "may." The Clause provides that the
… Minister may by order provide … for the marking of calves imported or brought into the United Kingdom.
We suggest that all imported calves should be marked. I think that the Minister agrees with us that all imported calves should be marked, but at present they are being marked under a Ministry of Food scheme and this power is only required should the Ministry of Food scheme come to an end. Therefore, I would not intend to move the third Amendment.
The fourth Amendment is to leave out the words in brackets
… (subject to such exceptions, if any, as may be specified in the order).
As I understand it, the Minister is in entire agreement with us that all imported calves ought to be marked. I would suggest, therefore, that this is an Amendment to which he will be able to agree, because there should be no exceptions to the marking of imported calves.

Major Legge-Bourke: I hope that the Minister will satisfy one doubt in my mind. We have had discussion on Clause 1 about the age of calves. It seems to me that the age, whatever stipulations are made about it, should also be borne in mind in this Clause, and I should be grateful if the Minister would say what is his intention.

Sir T. Dugdale: I accept the first two Amendments in principle, but I should be grateful if the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) would substitute "born" for "bred" in the second Amendment, for that would make it a little less ambiguous and bring it into line with Clause 1 (1, a).

Mr. Paget: I shall be pleased to move the Amendment in that form.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In line 10, after "made," insert:
only in respect of calves born in the United Kingdom."—[Mr. Paget.]

Mr. Paget: I beg to move, in line 11, to leave out from "provide," to "for," in line 12.

Sir T. Dugdale: I am afraid that I cannot accept the Amendment. Its purpose is to deprive the Minister of the power to make exceptions to orders providing for the marking of calves imported into the United Kingdom. Hon. Members will agree that it is important for us to have a certain amount of latitude, for we may find exceptional cases in which we do not want to mark calves in this way. Bull calves coming over from the Republic of Ireland from time to time are licensed in an entirely different way, under the Improvement of Livestock (Licensing of Bulls) Act, 1931, and we should not want to mark those pedigree animals in this way for a subsidy, for there is no point in their having a subsidy if they have come over for stud purposes. There are other occasions on which valuable calves are admitted for exhibition at the Royal Show, and we should want latitude to allow them to enter without being marked for subsidy. For that reason, I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will not press the Amendment.
In reply to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke)—although it does not really arise on this Amendment—I have already tried to explain to the Committee that an imported calf will be classified as a calf until its first incisor tooth shows.

Mr. Paget: Again, the reason seems to me an eminently good one, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3.—(OFFENCES.)

9.30 p.m.

Mr. Champion: I beg to move, in page 3, line 33, to leave out subsection (2).
We move to leave out the subsection because we want some explanation of

it. There are many points about this subsection on which we should like some elucidation. I can well understand that the Minister will realise our difficulty in the matter, and probably he would like to give an explanation straight away.

Sir T. Dugdale: This subsection is inserted as a safeguard for the future. It is perfectly clear that no one will obstruct the marking of an eligible calf because, if so, no subsidy would be payable. But there might be an obstruction to the marking of an imported calf, or of a rejected calf if at some future time myself or any other Minister decided that they should be marked.
I wish to make it clear to the Committee that under the first scheme rejected calves will not be marked. We think on balance, having considered the matter carefully, that they should not be marked, but there will be no appeal. If on the first inspection they do not come up to standard there will be a chance on the second inspection that they might qualify. In the future possibly we might go in for marking, or some other Minister may go in for marking. So far as imported animals are concerned, we put in the provision for safety purposes.

Mr. Paget: I hope the Minister will reconsider this, because it is not in this sort of casual spirit that one ought to create criminal offences. This Clause creates a criminal offence. To say, "We have shoved it in, not because we want this criminal offence for our protection now, but we think it just possible that in the future we shall want to do something which might make it desirable to make it a crime at some future date," is really not the way one ought to go about creating crimes. To bring a man into the dock charged with a criminal offence is a serious matter and ought not to be done in a casual, slipshod way.
If the Minister at some future time makes provisions which cannot be worked properly without calling into assistance provisions of the criminal law he should come to Parliament again and say, "I need the protection of the criminal law." But to say, "I want to provide the protection of the criminal law for something I am not doing, something which at the moment I have no particular intention of doing, something that I might or might not want to do in the future and which I am not quite sure


what it will be even if I do want it"—that is not the way in which crime ought to be created. I fully realise that the Minister is not a lawyer and that he will want to consider this matter. I hope he will say, "In view of what has been said, I will have another look at this" before he comes to Report stage.

Sir T. Dugdale: I think the remarks of the hon. and learned Member are not really worthy of him. I did not deal with this in a casual spirit. I have looked at it carefully. In any case we want the provision from the point of view of the possibility of imported calves. The other possibility is for the future, and I have tried to explain to the Committee why we thought it right to have this subsection. This is not being done in a casual spirit; I hope the Committee will accept that from me.

Mr. Champion: On the point which the Minister has just made about the marking of imported calves, I understand that as subsection (1) relates to
a calf in respect of which an application for a payment under that scheme has been made …
it would be impossible for an application to be made under that scheme. Therefore, the Minister's point could not apply in those circumstances.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) made a very strong point. I can well imagine some hon. Members who always spoke so strongly on personal liberty from this side when they were in opposition would have spoken at great length had this point been introduced by the Labour Government.
In the circumstances, the Minister ought to give us an undertaking that he will at least consult his legal friends before the Report stage, and if, after consulting them, he feels it desirable, to delete this subsection from the Bill or amend it in some way so that it will not offend against what I regard as the very strong point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton.

Major Legge-Bourke: When I was listening to the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) just

now, I wondered on which side he was sitting, because the speech he has just made was one I can remember hon. Members who now sit on this side of the Committee making over and over again in the 1945–50 Parliament, when his right hon. Friends were proposing the continuance of emergency laws and other powers of that nature giving them immense power, which they said they never wanted to use, that they hoped they would not have to use but might have to use some time and must have the power to be able to do so.

Mr. Paget: The hon. and gallant Member will have the courage to maintain his position now he is on the Government benches?

Major Legge-Bourke: If the hon. and learned Member will give me time to finish what I propose to say, I hope I can make it quite clear to him what I intend to do.
What the hon. and learned Member has said has drawn attention to one feature of this Bill which I do not very much like—the enormous power which it is giving to officials to use powers under the criminal law, as the hon. and learned Member said, against private citizens. I dislike that part of it. I hope the Minister will be prepared to look at it again to see if there is some way of clarifying exactly what the power of these people is to be.
I feel that this is a matter which we should never leave indefinite, but for the hon. and learned Member and other hon. Members to get up and try to plead this case—well, I suppose that a death-bed repentance is better than none.

Sir T. Dugdale: I am perfectly prepared to consult my legal advisers on this point.

Mr. Champion: Having regard to the way in which the Minister has received our representations, I gladly ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 4 and 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New Clause.—(PROVISIONS AS TO AGE OF CALVES.)

(1) For the purposes of any scheme under section one of this Act or order under section two thereof, the limit of age at which an animal ceases to be a calf shall be such age as may be specified in such a scheme or order.

(2) Any such limit of age as aforesaid, or any limit of age to be specified in accordance with paragraph (c) of subsection (1) of section one of this Act may (if the scheme or order in question so provides) be defined therein wholly or partly by reference to the growth of teeth or am other feature.—[Sir T. Dugdale.]

Brought up, and read the First and Second time and added to the Bill.

New Clause.—(PROVISIONS AS TO SLAUGHTER OF CALVES.)

(1) With a view to ensuring that calves on which subsidy has been paid are not subsequently slaughtered before reaching maturity the appropriate minister shall by order provide the conditions under which such calves shall be submitted for slaughter.

(2) Any order under this section shall make provision for the emergency slaughter of immature animals under such terms and conditions (including but without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing, a term requiring the repayment to the minister of any subsidy that has been paid) as the minister may deem expedient.

(3) Any order under this section may be varied or revoked by a subsequent order made thereunder.

(4) Subsection (2) of section one shall apply in relation to orders made under this section as it applies in relation to schemes.

(5) The power to make orders under this section shall be exercisable by statutory instrument which shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.—[Mr. T. Fraser.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. T. Fraser: I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
The Committee stage of this Bill has proceeded very happily up to now. One or two small Amendments have been made to the Bill, I think for the better. The Minister has proved himself very accommodating, as he always does. I hope that this new Clause, which stands in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) and other of my hon. Friends, will be as favourably received by the right hon. Gentlemen as some of the Amendments have been.
I know full well that the Minister wishes to give effect to the policy contained in the new Clause. What is it we want to do? First we wish to ensure that

calves on which the subsidy has been paid shall not be prematurely slaughtered. In the last two or three years one has heard the criticism very often that an alarming proportion of our young animals which ought to have been fed to maturity were being accepted at the collecting centres and were being slaughtered, notwithstanding they were certified animals in respect of which the subsidy had been drawn.
In February of this year I read a reference to it in the "Meat Trades' Journal." I quote from page 392 of the "Meat Trades' Journal" of 21st February—
Suckled calves between 4 and 5 cwt. which yielded a percentage of 54 or 56 and were our potential beef cattle for the next year or the year afterwards, were despatched in this way. There must be some scheme for ensuring that these immature cattle shall be fed on to the required weights. The way to stop it was to see that animals which were obviously stores were not accepted as beef cattle.
At that time I got in touch with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food. Not only did he write to me very courteously about it, but we had a full and useful discussion. He was a little hampered in that discussion, because at that time the Government were having discussions with the National Farmers' Union about the desirability of introducing some sort of provision to ensure that calves which had earned the subsidy were not prematurely slaughtered. May I read from a letter from the Ministry of Food dated 7th October of this year.
On the 5th May last we introduced as an experiment a provision that no animal weighing under 6 cwt. would be eligible for grading. This seems to have had a good effect and has certainly been well received. However, this trade in lightweight cattle (mostly suckled heifer calves) is limited to a period of about 10 weeks in the autumn and we shall not be able to express a firm opinion on the value of this new provision for a few weeks yet.
So I appreciate that the Government are doing something to meet the point which arises immediately on this new Clause.
I think it would be a good thing to have in this Bill which deals with the calf subsidy the sort of protection for the taxpayer which he is entitled to enjoy. As many hon. Members have said, we are seeking to pay to the farmer in advance a price which he would otherwise get for his beef cattle when fed to maturity and ultimately slaughtered. The farmer or the feeder, or whoever has the animal at any stage in its development,


has, therefore, a duty to hold on to the animal and to maintain it until it reaches maturity.
In the first subsection of the Clause we ask that the Minister shall
by order provide the conditions under which such calves shall be submitted for slaughter.
and shall do so with a view to ensuring that calves are not slaughtered prematurely.
9.45 p.m.
Further, we go on to provide that the order should make provision for emergency slaughter of immature animals, under conditions that seem to the Minister appropriate for the animals to be slaughtered. We do not want to make laws stupidly providing for Ministers to make orders by Statutory Instrument requiring an animal to be refused when submitted for slaughter in circumstances in which it will be in the interests of the animal and of humanity, as well as right in every respect, that it would be slaughtered, but we seek to see that, if an animal has to be slaughtered prematurely, then it is not the animal which has a right to attract the £5 subsidy, which is really part of the price which otherwise would have been received for the animal when it had reached maturity.
The other subsections are common form, and are to be found in the earlier Clauses of the Bill. I think the new Clause is, in all respects, reasonable, and that it seeks to do what the Minister would wish to do. I submit that, in this case, it is better that the Minister's policy in this regard should be given expression in the Bill, and that it can only be done by the inclusion of such a Clause as this. It may be that the wording is faulty, but this is a course which the Minister would wish to take, and I therefore hope that he will accept it.

Mr. Paget: As my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Fraser) has said, there is really nothing between us on this side of the Committee and the Government with regard to the purpose of the new Clause. It is their intention, as I understand it, to include conditions in their schemes with a view to ensuring that calves on which a subsidy has been paid are kept on to proper maturity, and I presume that there must be conditions

for premature killing, either for humanitarian reasons with regard to disease or illness, or perhaps from sudden loss of fodder and reasons of that sort.
The only substantial reason why we feel that this should be included in the Bill is that anybody who is receiving a subsidy is always vulnerable, while those who are not receiving a subsidy want to attack those who are. Therefore, it seems as well that subsidy Bills should not be drawn widely but, when they are needed, they should not be open to the misrepresentation that this subsidy is a gift to calf-rearing farmers for calves to be kept until the subsidy is paid and then slaughtered. We have all heard that criticism, and I think it would be desirable to put in the Bill something to make it quite clear that this is only a pre-payment of the beef price, and is conditional on the beef coming forward.
With regard to the drafting, it is not an easy Clause to draft. This particular effort is the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) and myself, and neither of us claim to be expert draftsmen. I would entirely accept the position that the Minister would require something better than this, but I hope we have done enough to give the general idea of what we feel should be included, and which would protect farmers, and indeed the Minister, from the criticisms which we have all heard with regard to this calf-subsidy.

Mr. Nugent: I fear that I strayed a little into the realms of this new Clause when I was replying to the hon. Gentleman's query on the Question that Clause 1 stand part of the Bill, and I indicated that the intention behind this new Clause is really already contained in the Bill. Perhaps I should explain that in a little more detail.
At the present time, the Ministry of Food have the necessary power to reject, and, as the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) rightly said, it has recently been introduced by the Ministry of Food to provide that cattle below the weight of 6 cwt. shall be automatically rejected. The Ministry of Food further have the power to deduct the £5 subsidy from animals which have received that subsidy, but which are considered by the graders to be immature. Therefore, all the powers needed to carry out the intention of hon. Gentlemen opposite are


already possessed by the Government. All that is now needed is to ensure that the farming community understands that this is the intention of the Government.
We entirely agree with the view put forward that where a subsidy has been paid it is, in fact, as the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) rightly said, a pre-payment of the beef price conditional on the beef coming forward. I do not think there could be a better or more realistic way of saying that the subsidy is part payment for the beef. Therefore, it is a right and proper condition that when the animal is slaughtered it is in a mature condition. If the animal is presented for slaughter in an immature condition, the £5 will be deducted.
As regards the information being generally known, I think the scheme itself will probably have a note on it to that effect, although it will not be part of the scheme because the necessary powers already exist. A Press announcement will be made jointly by our Ministry and the Ministry of Food to ensure that the farming community know the exact conditions which exist with regard to the presenting of immature animals which have received the calf subsidy. That should ensure that if a fattener or store rearer has presented for slaughter an animal which is considered to be immature, and he himself did not receive the subsidy but it was received by the farmer who actually reared the calf, the farmer who presents the animal for slaughter knows what risk he takes when he presents an immature animal.
We feel that in that way we shall ensure that the farming community as a whole will know exactly what conditions will operate. As the power already exists and as we intend to do exactly what the mover and supporters of this Clause want to do, I hope that they will withdraw the proposed Clause.

Mr. Champion: The Parliamentary Secretary said that provisions covering this point are contained in the Bill. I cannot find them in the Bill.

Mr. Nugent: I did not say they were contained in the Bill; I said the powers already existed. The Ministry of Food already have those powers, and, as the hon. Member for Hamilton has said, they have already announced that they propose to reject any animal below 6 cwt.

as being immature. They also have the necessary power to deduct the £5 subsidy where the animal is considered immature.

Mr. Paget: This proposed Clause is not merely an empowering Clause but a Clause which requires that the power should be exercised. As the Minister has pointed out, it is very essential that this should be known and realised. Would it not be as well, as one means at least of publicising this, and indeed as a means of putting it in proper form, if a suitable Clause included the words, "Unless a regulation made by the Ministry of Food, etc." and for the draftsmen to see whether by the Report stage they can provide a suitable Clause which will fulfil all our purposes?

Mr. T. Fraser: May I point out that the Ministry of Food are only able to exercise this power of refusing these animals because the collecting centres are held by the Ministry of Food and the grading officers are the servants of the Ministry of Food? It is not altogether impossible that whilst this Bill, when it becomes an Act, is still on the Statute Book and the first scheme is in operation either the Ministry of Food will itself have ceased to exist or this function, at least, will have been surrendered by the Ministry of Food.
The Government of which I was a junior member had to give very serious thought to a suggestion that was made that we should have a meat marketing scheme under the Marketing Act. We gave a lot of thought to that, and it was suggested that we should consider the method by which and the authorities under which animals should be slaughtered in the future. We were asked to consider whether these things should continue to be done in future, as in recent years, under the auspices of the Ministry of Food.
The National Farmers' Union have been giving very serious thought to this matter. It is no secret now that the Union take the view that the whole of meat marketing should be undertaken by the producers and that the producers should be responsible for slaughtering the animals. We have seen in the newspapers—and I do not want to engage in party bickering—that the present advisers of Her Majesty's Government were considering winding up the Ministry of Food [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Hon.


Members say "Hear, hear" and I make the observation and put forward the possibility in support of the new Clause which I am now moving.
The whole purpose of this Clause is to make it mandatory on the Minister to do something which the Minister says it is right that he should do. He says, "The only reason I do not wish to take this new Clause and put it in the Bill is that the Government are doing all this at the present time. It is not necessary for me to take these powers because my colleague the Minister of Food is exercising them under the general powers which he possesses." The Minister of Food is only exercising them because the centres and the graders are his.
Tonight the Minister has asked us to agree to Clause 1 under which the first scheme which he makes will run from October, 1951, to October, 1955—that is, three years from the passage of the Measure. I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that it is a reasonable assumption that some of the powers which are exercised by the Ministry of Food at the present time will not be exercised by the Ministry of Food for the whole of the next three years.
In the circumstances, since this is a matter which is completely wrapped up with the payment of the calf subsidy—and that is all that this Bill is about—I submit that the Minister should give further thought to this Clause. Like my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). I am not insisting that the words in the proposed new Clause are the right ones. If the Minister cannot accept the Clause in the form in which it is drafted will he not say that, since he accepts the policy contained in the Clause, he will have another look at it and consider whether he can bring forward something on the Report stage?

10.0 p.m.

Mr. Nugent: The hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) has made his case so eloquently and cogently and with such clarity that I am bound to say that I must recognise the point that he is suggesting, that in this Clause we should cover the possibility of the Ministry of Food powers not existing, similarly to what we have done in Clause 2. In those circumstances, we shall be willing to look

at this matter again between now and the Report stage, and I trust that with that undertaking the hon. Gentleman will agree to withdraw the proposed new Clause.

Mr. Fraser: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that undertaking. This has been a very happy Committee stage. The Minister and his colleagues on the Front Bench have been most forthcoming and co-operative in every way. I thank them for their co-operation and for the way in which they have compromised with us throughout, and in particular I am grateful for the reply which the Joint Parliamentary Secretary has just given. In the circumstances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion and Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended, to be considered Tomorrow; and to be printed. [Bill 154.]

Orders of the Day — AGRICULTURAL WORKERS (CALL-UP)

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Kaberry.]

10.2 p.m.

Major Sydney Markham: It is perhaps fitting that on a day when we have devoted so much of our time to agricultural questions we should conclude by directing our attention to the most burning of agricultural questions in so far as it affects the personnel in the industry.
I want to draw attention to the dissatisfaction and inefficiency that is being caused by the agricultural call-up. I think the facts are well known. They are that since the National Service Acts of 1948 and 1950, for the first time in the history of this nation in peace-time, agricultural workers have been made liable for the general call-up for National Service. The first batches were called up just a year ago, and since then 12,000 of our best agricultural workers have been taken off the land and put into uniform. We have had sufficient time now to consider the effects of this call-up in so far as it affects the agricultural community. There are five major conclusions which all indicate the need for desirable action on the part of the Ministry.
The first of the conclusions is that the calling up of each one of these men has caused a certain amount of disruption to the farm concerned and a lessening of food production which inevitably follows. The second is that although the present Government have extended the deferment from six to 12 months, it still means that neither farmers nor farm workers can plan in terms of long distance planning so far as their own lives or farms are concerned. There is today not only unsettlement in the farming community but also great confusion and often great distress.
I have here a constituency case which I take simply as an example, I believe, of hundreds of letters which the Ministry are getting week by week and month by month. We have in this case, which comes from Buckingham, a farmer's son with a fine experience of the land, now willing and able to take on an adjacent farm, to take it on under his own steam and with his own knowledge, perhaps with parental advice which is always so valuable in these respects. It is natural that the father and son want to know whether the son's present deferment for 12 months would be continued if he moves from his father's farm to a farm of his own.
This is the answer that came from the Ministry of Labour, dated 17th October, 1952—exactly three days ago:
Mr. Meadows' son is at present deferred until next April in the interests of food production on the holding on which he is employed. Should he leave this employment, deferment would automatically terminate and he would immediately become available for call-up. Should he take up agricultural employment on his own account, it would, of course, be open for him to apply for deferment. I cannot express any opinion of what the outcome of such an application would be hut, if deferment were allowed, it would be for a limited period only. There can be no question of indefinite deferment being granted.
How can any farmer or farmer's son plan ahead with such indecisiveness as that hanging over his head, not for a period of months only, but so long as he is thinking of extending his potential field of operation? The present system is causing unsettlement, confusion and, quite often, intense distress.
The next point is that this call-up is a sheer waste of Army time. These 12,000 men are taken into the Army with

the rest of the call-up. They are given the best that the Army can give them in terms of training, instruction, quarters and everything else, and yet the Army authorities, the Cabinet and the whole country know that in the event of war not a single one of these men, if he is still in agricultural work, would be called up for service unless we should actually be invaded. That makes the whole of this training by the Army a waste of the nation's instructional power within the Army itself. I use the word "Army" in this case, but it is equally true of the Navy and the Air Force.
If it be said—as was said in this House only a few months ago—that these men could not possibly be spared from the Army now because of our heavy commitments in Korea and so on, I would remind the Minister—and I am sure that he will not mind me doing so—that it was only three months ago that the Prime Minister made a public announcement that the call-up was to be reduced by 30,000 men. Surely, in that case, the first consideration should be given to not calling up the agricultural workers.
Turning to the financial aspect, I have pointed out that these men, as trained soldiers, would not be called up in the event of war. Let us assume that a moderate figure for the waste of training, equipment, and food for these men within the Army would be £500 a year. It is a very moderate estimate. If the man is in the Air Force, in certain categories his training may cost something like £3,000 a year, but taking the general average of £500 a year, we are losing £6 million a year at least in training men we shall never require or intend to use if there is a war. It is so obvious to everybody that if there is a war one of the first requirements of the agricultural community will be to produce the food we shall then so badly need, as we did in the First and Second World Wars.
Finally, there is a grave question on which as yet the Minister has no figures. I have asked him and I believe that his reply in the House had been accurate, to the effect that he had no figures or information; but I believe that the farming community, so well represented on this side of the House, will agree when I say that a good many of these young men who are called up into the Forces from the farming community never go back to the farm.
In the words of the song which dates from the First World War, "How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paree"? How true it is that world travel tempts men as strongly now as it did in the days of the Prodigal Son, and so few return to the farm after they have had experience not just of soldiering but of seeing the world at large, and have found opportunities other than those of farming. We have to face up to the fact that these agricultural workers are being taken away from the farms not just for temporary periods but often permanently.
All these are grave and sound reasons why the call-up of agricultural workers for full-time National Service should be abandoned forthwith. On this side of the House, at any rate, I think there is a great volume of opinion that is with me in this respect. But even then these men will be of service to the country in our need. I would suggest that the call-up for National Service could be replaced either by voluntary enlistment in the Home Guard or a period of service with the Territorial Forces.
For these reasons I do earnestly ask the Minister tonight—and, through him, the Cabinet—to reconsider this question of the agricultural call-up, and to leave the farm-workers where they will be of the greatest use to the country whether in time of peace or in time of war.

10.11 p.m.

Mr. J. Grimond: I want to say only a word in support of what has been said by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Buckingham (Major Markham). I wholeheartedly agree with what he said. In my constituency, and indeed in Scotland generally, small farms and crofts are run for the most part by a family; and if a member of that family is called up, there is no question of replacing him.
To begin with, the farmer or crofter cannot pay for the replacement and even if he could he could not get one. This means that agricultural production falls by the amount which that man does on the croft or farm, and indeed the croft or farm could be put out of production by his absence. Very often we lose that man to the countryside for ever. As the hon.

and gallant Gentleman said, a large number of them, once they leave, do not come back.
I suggest that if we are to get the extra food the Government say they want, if we are to develop the Highlands generally, this matter has to be tackled, not from the point of view of the man running a factory, who has many employees, so that if be loses one or two be can replace them, but from the point of view of life in the countryside; and that means that if the men are to be of use to the country they must be allowed to continue on the farms in peace time and to serve in the Home Guard or the Territorial Army in war.
At present this matter does cause the widest concern over the whole countryside, and many letters must have been received by the Government on this subject which show that this is not a criticism by a few men who feel disgruntled: it is a conflict between the need for food and the need for Armed Forces. To my mind the time has come to review the whole thing, and to release those men from call-up.

10.14 p.m.

Mr. Rupert Speir: No doubt everyone appreciates the great difficulties that face the Government at the present time in keeping up the armed strength of our Forces in view of their very great commitments throughout the world, and no doubt the agricultural community is grateful for the concessions that have already been made in regard to the call up of agricultural workers.
The point that I should like to make is that the agricultural community is not asking for further concessions now because it wishes in any way to be given unreasonable treatment, but because it realises that if the demand for an increased output of food is to be fulfilled the workers must be attracted to the land rather than taken away from it, as has already been said by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Buckingham (Major Markham).
It is a platitude that agriculture is our fourth line of defence, and that it cannot play its proper part in this connection unless it is given the labour to do the job properly. We know that, as a result of the call up, in spite of the concessions which have been made, many thousands of young men have been taken from the


land and will never return to it. They have gone for good.
I am quite sure that the agricultural community is as anxious as any section of the community to play its part in national defence. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more loyal or steadfast section of the community, and I do not believe the members of it want to be absolved altogether from taking part in national defence. I want to reinforce the plea which has been made to the Government that they should investigate the possibility of allowing these young workers to remain in their present occupations while at the same time undertaking training either with the Home Guard or with Territorial units, and perhaps for even longer than the present two-year period.

10.16 p.m.

Colonel Alan Gomme-Duncan: For one or two minutes before the Minister replies, I want to reinforce what my hon. Friends have said and to emphasise that in the case of an island Power such as ourselves, agriculture, the production of food, is the first line of defence and not the fourth. The other three are entirely dependent upon it. I cannot help thinking that we are not giving sufficient emphasis to food production in connection with defence.
It may be of interest to the Minister to know that figures given by the National Farmers' Union of Scotland at their conference last week showed that last year 3,000 people left the land. The decrease in the number of male workers on the land was 3,000, and of this number about 1,250 were young men between the ages of 18 and 21 who obviously almost all went in the call-up.
When we realise the immense difficulties in the harvest in certain parts of the country this year, as was said by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), and what amounted almost to chaos in some cases through lack of labour, then clearly this situation is not good enough. I do not think the farming community wishes to be thought behindhand in its efforts on behalf of the country, nor could that accusation justifiably be made. But I believe strongly that the job of members of the farming community is to grow the food which is our first line of defence, and for which we, as an island Power, are becoming more

and more dependent on our own farming. Without this food production we shall sink whether we like it or not, and however strong the other arms of our Services may be.

10.17 p.m.

Mr. Spencer Summers: It must be seldom that an hon. Member has so fortunate an experience as I have had. On Friday I received a deputation from the farming community urging me to press this topic, and on Monday I have had the opportunity of doing so presented to me by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Buckingham (Major Markham). I want to reinforce the plea which has been made and not to repeat some of the points which have already been raised, for I am sure the Minister wants time in which to reply.
In particular, I want to draw attention to one marked difference between this industry and other industries—and that is that it operates a seven-day week. The difficulties of coping with week-end working, notably in milk production, are already considerable, and the call-up of the young people who entered the industry with an enthusiasm for it is having an added detrimental effect which is particularly noticeable in connection with this week-end working.
The deferment, such as it is, was given largely to provide an opportunity for alternative workers to be found so that when a man was called up the farm did not suffer. But I doubt very much whether the Minister would dispute that in nine cases out of 10 it is virtually impossible to find an alternative worker. The result is that sooner or later the man is called up and no alternative is found for him. If the industry does not produce the extra food which is demanded from it, there is no doubt that this factor will have contributed to such a lamentable state of affairs.

10.19 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour and National Service (Mr. Harold Watkinson): I am quite sure the whole House will be very grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Buckingham (Major Markham) for raising this subject tonight. It is a very important subject, and it is also desirable that the country should know from time to time the present views of the Government.
I have listened with very great care to the powerful pleas put forward by my hon. Friends, and also by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond). I recognise the force of the case which they have made, but I think to be fair we must have a sense of proportion in this matter, and the figure which best puts the problem in proportion is this: at the moment we are calling up from agriculture in a year only one out of every 100 of those employed in the industry.
Because we are taking only that very small proportion it is fair to say—and I have been into these figures very carefully—that 19 out of 20 farms are unaffected by the agricultural call-up. In examining this matter, therefore, do let us at least keep a sense of proportion in our minds, because there are many other industries which are asked to bear a very much heavier burden than that. Perhaps I might give just one other figure to that end. As far as we can see, the numbers called up each year will not exceed 8,000. Now that is 8,000 out of the 200,000 that we have to find each year for National Service.

Major Markham: Does the Minister agree that the figure for this year is 12,000? The OFFICIAL REPORT of 1st August goes a long way to prove my contention.

Mr. Watkinson: I will in a moment give the actual figures, which will perhaps help my hon. and gallant Friend. The fact is that in the first year we did not call up more than 8,100, and in the second year we shall not call up more than about a similar number.

Major Markham: With great respect, that is in flat contradiction of the OFFICIAL REPORT of 1st August.

Mr. Watkinson: I will come to that in a moment.
I have said that first of all we must keep some sense of proportion. Several other hon. Members, particularly the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, have raised the question whether we are dealing with this matter with proper sympathy, whether we are administering the thing as sympathetically and as intelligently as we can. I should like to say, although my hon. and gallant Friend

the Member for Buckingham did mention it, that we had made a good many modifications to the agricultural call-up in the first year of office. We have dealt with the definition of stockmen, enlarging it to cover pigmen as well as cowmen and shepherds.
As my hon. and gallant Friend fairly recognises, we have also altered the period of deferment normally granted from six months to 12 months. In addition, we have made provision for applications for renewal of deferment to be allowed without going through the full deferment machinery because we thought that would be helpful to the industry. We have also made special provision for odd cases where a farmer is hit especially hard, and we have suspended the call-up during the harvest period, phasing it as best we could for both this country and Scotland, trying to meet Scotland's special needs. I therefore do not think it can be said that since we had this difficult job to do we have not tried to meet the needs of the farming community as sympathetically as we could.
Whatever we do in this call-up, we must be fair and be seen to be fair to every section of the population. If it is felt in any way that there is some sort of back door blanket which a man can throw over himself the whole system of National Service would crash to the ground, and would deserve to do so, and I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend must weigh that above all things. Whatever we do we must be fair, and we must try to apply the principle of universality of service and equality of sacrifice.

Sir Ian Fraser: On the question of fairness, does my hon. Friend call to mind the arrangement whereby fishermen on the sea coast of Britain may, instead of doing two years, be called up for a few weeks each year, follow their special avocation, and thus discharge their duty, which is thought to be fair? Could not we have some special duty for agricultural workers?

Mr. Archer Baldwin: What about the miners?

Mr. Watkinson: I shall deal with the question of the miners in a moment. I want to make it quite plain that we are


trying to interpret this thing as fairly and sympathetically as we can. I think this will meet the point made by my hon. and gallant Friend. Out of the total that we could call up, which is about 15,000 a year, with deferments, and so on, in the end we take only 50 per cent. I would say that we take 8,000: 50 per cent. would be 7,500.
My hon. and gallant Friend might also like to know that out of the first applications for deferment we have allowed 82 per cent., and out of renewal applications for deferment we have allowed no less than 94 per cent. That makes the difference between the total of the age group we could call up and the actual numbers which in the end will be called up. I am afraid that my right hon. and learned Friend and I feel that we have gone as far as we can to interpret this thing sensibly and fairly. I must again point out that unless there is a feeling in the country that there is equality the thing would crash to the ground.
I have been rightly asked about the coal miners. Coal mining is, above all things, a special case. It is a job where there is a certain amount of physical danger to be competed with, and to that extent it is more on all fours with service in Her Majesty's Forces than any other industry which could be selected. That, I think, is one of the reasons that weighs with us in leaving coal mining out of this scheme.
I have just one other thing to say which I think may help to put this into perspective. Let us remember that in the engineering industry there has recently been a certain amount of talk because we have given two years' more deferment in a few cases—only about 3,000—after a man has served his full five years' apprenticeship. The point I want to make is that, even so, nobody escapes. A man may get a few years' extra deferment, but he does not escape the net and he does not escape his obligation. The engineering industry and all other industries are not treated nearly as generously in numbers out of the very large group deferred. Farming, with nearly 50 per cent. deferment, fares far better than any other industry.
I have been asked: Are we really wasting money and wasting valuable time in training these young men taken from the agricultural industry? I am not

prepared to accept that we are. Are we quite sure, anyway, that in the new pattern of a war which we may have to fight, if unfortunately it should come, that to have a nucleus of trained men all over the country may not be just the sort of thing that we want? I feel that is a case for continuing the training of men in the agricultural industry, rather than a case for discontinuing it. Quite apart from that argument, I think that my hon. Friends really know that, at the moment, notwithstanding the foolish things said in the country at weekends, the Services just cannot meet their obligations if we cease this call-up.
I want to clear away any misconception about the figure of 30,000, which was incidentally cleared up later in the debate. That figure of 30,000 arises entirely because we are calling up one more age group this year than we are next year. It is not a surplus at all, and as we see it in the Ministry of Labour at the moment, we shall be short of men next year in the Forces unless there is some major reshuffle which we do not see at the moment, rather than having a surplus We shall be hard pressed to meet requirements even with the 8,000 people we are taking from agriculture.
There is one other thing which I should like to say to my hon. and gallant Friend who sits for the fair city of Perth. I was there not long ago, and I sympathise with his point of view concerning Scottish agriculture. Nevertheless, if people are not coming back to agriculture that industry only faces the same problem as the engineering and other industries, and I am afraid that agriculture must try to keep in touch with its men and attract them back to agriculture.
We have tried to make a concession, and I want to make it quite plain that we are always reviewing the general details of the call-up over the whole field, and not only in agriculture. That is a continuous process. Generally the view of Her Majesty's Government on the agricultural call-up is that it must, on grounds of fairness and everything else, stay as it is, and it must continue to make its contribution to the national effort of this country.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Would not my hon. Friend agree that food is far more important than any other industry


in the world? This has nothing to do with sympathy but with the hard, brutal fact that we must have food production.

Mr. Watkinson: I am afraid that we shall not have it unless we manage to fulfil our defence commitments and this country remains safe.

Major Markham: May I thank the Minister for his extremely courteous and thoughtful reply, and thank him very much for the concessions which the Government have already made. I should like, however, at the same time, to say in the most implacable terms that I can that we are not satisfied. This is a very grave question of principle and we shall continue to fight for it by every recognised Parliamentary constitutional method that is known.

Mr. Watkinson: I would not expect my hon. Friend to do anything else. That is entirely his duty, as it is my duty to try and put the national interest which I still think is perhaps a little more important than the sectional interest of agriculture, great and important though

that industry is. After all, our duty at the Ministry of Labour is to try to secure fair play all round. I notice that none of my hon. Friends has tried to attack me on that ground. I think that this, above all, is a most important consideration, because once we let the people—and I repeat this, because I think it is the most important thing—of this country believe that we are not doing this distasteful job as fairly and efficiently as we can, we cannot expect anyone with loyalty to follow and to work this scheme as most people are loyally following and working it today.
I sympathise with my hon. Friends. They are doing their duty, and I am trying to do mine. We have had a very enjoyable argument on this subject, and I do not think that I have overstated the case in saying that the general consideration which my right hon. Friend has to bear in mind is fairness and equality of sacrifice.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-eight Minutes to Eleven o'Clock.